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VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee:
Aaron M. Davis
Interviewer:
William Cobb
Date of Interview:
10 December 2010
Place of Interview:
George Sutherland Archives Orem, Utah
Recordist:
Brent Seavers
Recording Equipment:
Zoom Recorder H4n
Panasonic HD Video Camera AG-HM C709
Transcribed by:
Audio Transcript Edit
Kimberly Williamson
Transcript Final Edit:
William Cobb
Cover Summary
Kimberly Williamson
Complete and posted
Reference:
WC=William Cobb (Interviewer)
AD=Aaron Davis (Interviewee)
A=Audience
Brief Description of Contents:
Aaron Davis attended the Marine Military Academy during high school where he became the student body president and the battalion commander. He served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and upon his return a draft letter was waiting for him so he decided to enlist in the Marines. He talks about his training in San Diego and infantry training at Camp Pendleton, being stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, and interacting with Vietnam veterans. He speaks about an early release from the Marines, attending college, and working for the Marine Military Academy. Davis continues with his story of enlisting in the Army and being sent to Officer Candidates School, rising to company commander in Germany, and returning to civilian life. Currently, Davis resides in Herriman, Utah.
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as "uh" and false starts and stops in conversations are not included in transcription. All additions to transcript are noted with brackets.VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 2 | P a g e
AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION
[19:17]
WC: Today is Friday December 10, 2010, it is nine am and my name is William Cobb. I’m a professor of history at Utah Valley University and today is part of the Vietnam Era Oral History project. We are interviewing Aaron Davis.
WC: So, welcome Aaron to the interview.
AD: Thank you, Bill.
WC: I want to start with some very general biographical information and then want to move into the period of your life before you were drafted, the period before you went on to active duty, which is probably be when you went into basic training. So let’s start with me asking you your full name.
AD: Aaron Michael Davis.
WC: And your address?
AD: 14292 Copper Oaks Drive, Herriman, Utah 84096
WC: Date of birth?
AD: 08-29-50
WC: Place of birth?
AD: Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
WC: And were you raised someplace other than where you were born?
AD: Yes, my dad was a World War II veteran. He was on Midway when the war started. They had just split the battalion, they sent half to Wake Island and he stayed on Midway. Wake Island fell to the Japanese thirteen days after Pearl Harbor but they attacked Wake, Midway, and Pearl Harbor. In a historical perspective, since we just finished December seventh, a day that will live in infamy that has affected my family from that particular time. My dad was raised the son of a World War I veteran, my grandfather, and he was a sharecropper that got out of World War I. My dad was born in south Texas and these were Depression years, very difficult. We are talking maybe between a dime and twenty-five cents a day were the wages. My dad decided to join the Marine Corps for three hot’si and twenty-one dollars per month that was big money back then. So, you will see this kind of unfold in a monetary sort of way. Then World War II happened, he was on VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 3 | P a g e
Midway for the Japanese attack on December seventh and for the June sixth ‘42 large naval battle. If you see some of the footage of the battle of Midway, you will see some guys in weird looking short tin hats, they look like the Brits. Which they were really old; firing thirty caliber anti-aircraft guns [and] that was my dad. He was shooting at the Japanese planes. Then he was on Quadulan and finished up on Okinawa. Then I was the World War II baby that waited until 1950, which was another ominous year. If you look at what happened with Korea the Chinese invaded Tibet. So, you look at some other interesting historical juxtaposition.
We moved from Colorado to Mesa, Arizona where my dad had always wanted to be a teacher. He went to Arizona State College, which is now called Arizona State University. He worked part-time to get his teaching degree and then he went to work in Flagstaff, Arizona teaching high school for five years. During this time, my dad was always a very stern disciplinarian. He had a very short temper, and I didn’t understand any of that back then. We used to call it 1000-yard stare battle fatigue all kinds of different things. But now that the American Psychiatric Association through Bobby Moller and some others from VVAW iiputting pressure on them in 1980s to put it into DSMiii as a psychical disorder. It’s called posttraumatic stress disorderiv. So, anyway back to the history. Does anybody have a parent who was a teacher?
A: I did.
AD: Sometimes that is difficult, my dad was a perfectionist, okay. You’re going to do it and do it right and do it my way. I was always an outside of the box thinker and I would say, “Wait just a darn minute, I know there’s another way of doing things and mine is just as good as his” from age five on up. But that is kind of the way it was. I was kind of spare the rod and spoil the child, and he didn’t spare it. I look back and I will show my family— My kids pretty much turned out the same way I did.
WC: After you were born in Glenwood, you went down to Arizona?
AD: Mesa, my brother was born there. He’s three years younger. He’s a retired Air Force master sergeant. Then we moved to Flagstaff, Arizona where he was a high school teacher and we went through this town called Needles, California in 1958. And, we stayed at this hotel and it didn’t go below three digits until after midnight and we said, Anybody in their right mind would not live in this freak’n place. A year later, my dad gets a job teaching elementary school in Needles, California. (laughter)
AD: Those were some of my formative elementary school times.
WC: You alluded to your family. Tell me, are you married and do you have children and how many and how old are they?
AD: (laughs, showing picture) this is a picture of the family. This is the first ex[wife] and her husband. They just returned from a missionv from Spain. Some of you can relate to that. I have eight grandkids; one of them is fourteen, so when your grandkids get to be VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 4 | P a g e
teenagers you kind of go, wow. So, yes, I’m currently married for the third time. The wife is right here. (showing picture) She was married to her ex[husband] for thirty-one years. Interestingly enough, we were both married LDS
vi in the Salt Lake Temple. She was in a very abusive marriage for that long, but she stayed for the kids. Anyway, again as I mentioned, we only disagree on two things, religion and politics. We do have some spirited discussions, but I don’t make it like I did with my first ex [wife]. Like I’m wrong and you are right. I allow her—My hot-button issue is war and its related to the economy and her hot button issue is abortion. Having been a Republican and working on Orrin Hatch’s— Anyway I’m jumping ahead of myself that was my BYUvii thing. We’ve got to learn how to love and respect one another and although we know there are going to be differences. My daughter, interestingly enough, is graduating next week from Northern Arizona University to be a teacher, after two to three careers and two kids later. Sometimes we are slow learners (laughter) or just happen to have a lot of experiences in order to get where we are suppose to be. It’s interesting that my dad was a teacher and my first ex[wife] is a teacher. There’s a picture of the first ex[wife]. Interestedly enough both the first ex[wife] and the dad were very matter of fact black and white. I’m not one of those people. I’m very much a shades of gray continuum kind of person. Some days psychologically, physically, or emotional were somewhere wavering in the middle and then without my medication, I go Pfffft.
WC: Narrow those feelings down little bit, when you are in high school or college before you went into the military. How did you feel about what was happening in Vietnam?
AD: The earliest I can remember in grade school in Needles was we had these elections, straw poll if you will, in the classrooms and the first one –
[30:00]
Well, we’ve got this thing called the TV set. I have to digress a little bit. I used to listen to the Lone Ranger on the radio that’s kind of showing my age. And it was really quite fascinating, but then everybody got this black and white TV and then you could see the Lone Ranger. So, TV kind of influenced our opinions, attitudes, and belief systems. We will get into the media thing a little later—But I began to— I fell in love with Annette on the Mickey Mouse Club—
WC: Who didn’t? (laugher)
AD: Let’s see, who else, Connie Stevens and of course when Laugh-In came in, I’m still in love with Goldie Hawn. Be that as it may, I remember the first time I saw a disaster. I saw the black and white film footage of the Hindenburg when it exploded in 1938, holy— I had nightmares for a week about the damn thing. Not realizing that I was very sensitive, caring, and compassionate although I realized it because of conditioning. And again, my dad was a Marine. Everything was you know, he was not much into the feelings thing. I kind of became a little tougher. I guess. I bucked up. In order to survive sometimes in your family you have to just tough it out. And so, that’s kind of what I did. I’ll never forget— Just going back to my dad. I was in fifth grade taking this VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 5 | P a g e
psychological test. I was in the other fifth grade class so, I wasn’t in his. Thank goodness. But he was looking over my shoulders seeing the answers that I put down and I will never forget this comment, he said, “I can’t believe a son of mine would answer those questions as wrong as you did.” Now at that particular point, maybe we can call it an epiphany. I was pissed. I wanted to get out and be independent and do things on my own and I questioned everybody. I started— I believe at that moment my critical thinking. I said this is BS. I’ll not be like Bobby. ( laughter)
I guess I sort of made a circle. I was that way to begin with, but then the process of growing up hormones, inadequacies, and a lot of different things and then just surviving. So, that really was an epiphany for me. I went back when I was in therapy a few years ago and looked at my report cards thru that period and I said, “What the hell was he talking about?” I got good grades until that fifth grade epiphany when I said, I don’t care. All I’m doing is playing ball and chasing the girls to hell with this academic stuff. Again, this was kind of a turning point. Now here’s a paradox. I’m presenting to my daughter next week when she graduates a term paper that my dad [wrote] on me [about] my psychological and my physical growth while he was getting his teacher’s certification at Northern Arizona University. As I went back a couple of weeks ago and read it again (laughs) okay—Really interesting. I’m going to present that to her, simply because there are only two things I have from my dad, a Marine Corps blanket from World War II and that term paper. I’ll present her with the term paper that even has some of my little scribbling and colorings from kindergarten or the pre-school.
I kind of went into myself. I knew what I was feeling, but I didn’t work well with people. They would either hack me off or they wouldn’t accept me for who I was. So, we moved to Needles, California, where as I mentioned, elementary and junior high were very difficult for me. Although, I did excel and the only way I could get attention from my dad was throwing a ball at him and he liked baseball. I could get his attention and he would even throw it back occasionally. Then we moved to Livermore, California and I was a freshman in high school and did pretty well. The Bay area has always been an area of diverse people and a lot of different thoughts and people’s cultures. I’ve always kind of liked that.
Then in 1965, some of my buddies, including Scott Camil here (showing picture) when they were going into Vietnam. I was reading Life Magazine and also watching the news. I found a way out of this whole dilemma. There was an article in there about the Marine Military Academy. The only military school in America patterned after the customs and traditions of the United States Marine Corps. I said, “There’s my out. I can finally get the heck out of here.” So, my dad said, “You earn the four-hundred dollars. You can go to military school.” I got a job at my uncle’s wheat harvest crew cutting wheat in the Mid-West – That’s another interesting story. I did that for three summers actually. [I] went to the Marine Military Academy and after three years, became the student body president. Although, it wasn’t a popularity contest, I was appointed as the battalion commander. Because outwardly, I can portray a wonderful image of being in charge and telling people what to do. In my command voice, Company Command “inaudible” so that really excited them. Here, I’m in the classroom not doing very well at all these doggone subjects that I VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 6 | P a g e
wasn’t ready for. I took general math, general science, and all of that easy stuff at Livermore High School. But at the Academy, this is a naval college prep school. So two days into my chemistry class and I thought, Oh, my gosh. I can remember NACL or H
2O, but that’s it. I’m not doing this anymore. Of course, history Major Thompson was my history teacher and he was good. Plus he coached the basketball team and that was better. Then I got out of the classroom and played sports. [I] did very well, in 1969— We just had a reunion of some of the guys after forty years in Reno in March. We hadn’t seen each other for some forty-odd years. We got together and shot some hoops and it was kind of fun. We had an undefeated team, which we had 150 kids in the high school. We played the local competition and I remember they beat us seventy-five to nothing in football.
WC: When you were in high school how did you feel about what was going on in Vietnam and where did that information come from?
AD: Good question, Bill. I think it was my third year; there were some guys that the military sent in to come to the mess hall with us and sit down. They were wounded from Vietnam, okay. I remember talking to them about various things. They were not straight with me. The one guy said, “There is only one color and that’s green the Marine Corps green.” And I had begun to read a little bit, I knew that there were racial problems. In the bush everybody is together for survival, but when you get back to the hill
[40:00]
or your bunkers everybody goes their own way. They hang out with the guys doing the dap or the guys doing the drinking, or whatever. Again, there is a cognitive dissidence that I was beginning to see as I watched some of the coverage of Vietnam, I still believed in America. I still believed that we were the good guys. I still believed that our cause was just – Whatever at that point.
I did really well in the military as the battalion commander. [I] got the awards and led all the parades and gave all the commands. [I] finally had some girlfriends the last year and I didn’t know how to do any of that, another long story. [I had] a lot of inadequacies a lot of things from my childhood. But when I graduated from there, I went on a mission for the LDS Church. Now for whatever reason at the time we’re all into that particular time, doing what we think we should be doing, so that’s what I did. I served an LDS mission in the northern states. The Chicago area the mission covered Illinois, Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula of Michigan, part of Iowa, and part of Indiana. I did very well because I was gaining some self-confidence or at least portraying self-confidence. (laughs) Again there is the cognitive dissidence. I rose to become a traveling assistant. I was a leader again. I was able to motivate people and get them to do things and whatever. When I came home there was a draft letter setting there, because you have a 4-D deferment to serve a LDS mission, back in the days. I did some things; the economy was not very good back then. I did some part-time jobs, a busboy I worked in a warehouse. Things didn’t work well. All I wanted to do was play golf and chase the women. I couldn’t go back home again. You can’t go back home once you’ve been away that many years because if it’s oppressive VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 7 | P a g e
before, it’s oppressive then. I said, “There’s got to be a way out of this thing,” because I’m always looking for a way out. I said, “Alright, let’s check out the military.” I was going to be warrant officer pilot, because when I was at the Marine Military Academy, I got my private pilot license as part of the curriculum. You had the ground school and then you had the flying time. So I had my private license. I wanted to fly and had actually taken the test from one of the guys that I met on the mission that was a selection officer with the Marine Corps because I wanted to do PLAC
viii aviation. However, then I get home and the draft notice is sitting there and I have thirty days. I want to be a warrant officer and they said, No, your test scores are too low, because I don’t do well on tests. Going back to my high school years, I go back and look at my SAT’s and my ACT’s scores what was I thinking then. Well now, I know what I was thinking because I had ADHDix. Discounting the fact that my dad had PTSD (laughs). We could say now that I was abused. I was never comfortable sitting anywhere for very long or concentrating. Now I can actually do it with my medication, so that helps.
I think the Army has the best opportunities for a warrant officer because that is what I wanted to do but they said, No, I think we ought to send you to Air Traffic Control School. Then I said good-bye to people at church for about three weeks and I got tired of waiting and had to get out of there. I went across the hall to the Marine recruiter and I said, “What can you guarantee me and I want to ship tomorrow.” He said, “Can do.” Marine recruiters are pretty good they will get you into things that you never thought you could get into. I told them I didn’t do well on the AFQTx test, remember the old AFQT we all had to take. I think that I made a twenty-five on the darn thing because it had these stupid tools and stuff and my dad was a mechanic before he was a teacher and that was the last thing I wanted to do was to help him with the freak’n car. I didn’t know what tools they were because I had no idea what they were. The Marine recruiter comes in and says, “Come on back here in the back room” and he has the test right there and here are the answers to the test. We’re going to take you to the AP’s tomorrow, you’re going to get a good grade and get guaranteed aviation school. We’ll ship you, ten-four and he did! (laughs) So, I’m a living testimony that recruiters can do anything it takes to make their mission.
WC: So how are you feeling during this entire period? What do you know about Vietnam and how do you feel about the war?
AD: Again, I’ve been conditioned in the classroom and I think by the media and by popular opinion that we were fighting the Domino effect. That’s what we were told, that it was right to be there, and I continued to believe that. I questioned it maybe intellectually but not the other ways. I believed that I would go fight for my country. I would kill Commies that’s what I believed that a Marine was supposed to do. Again the Marine Corps training those changes are forever. Little did I realize—Course I had been conditioned by my dad, the Marine Military Academy for three years and an LDS mission and then the Marine Corps. In looking back I said, “My gosh, I was institutionalized.” But I resented that paradoxically almost like a caged person. Again, I did not question it a lot but I was ready to go.VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 8 | P a g e
WC: Where was most of your information coming from in that period did you watch the news every night?
AD: I’ve always been an avid newspaper reader. My dad and I would always fight to see who got the paper first. Now, I knew he paid for the thing. And, he always let me know, I pay for it, so I read it first. (laughs) [Be]cause I want information, okay? I’ve always been an information guy. I want to know what was going on in the world. I was still at that point very pro war believing in the United States being right in stopping the Domino effect. So, I didn’t question it.
I went through my training at the Marine Corp Depot in San Diego and then infantry training at Camp Pendleton. Then I shipped out to Memphis Naval Air Station where they were going to make me a structural mechanic. I looked at that and when you have a private license you can be an air radio operator, you know about navigation and all those kinds of things. They wanted those kinds of jobs and that’s what I wanted. But they said, Your test scores are not high enough. Again, I got limited, so I cop an attitude because people have been messing with me for a long time. I’m kind of a self-starter. I got up and did my job cleaning the head or the bathroom. Then some NCOxi comes up to me and says, Hey get in here and clean the bathroom. I said, “Find somebody else.” So, that didn’t endear me to the NCO’s obviously. I got in a little trouble and then I said, “Take this structural mechanic thing and stick it.”
[50:00]
They sent me to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina to be a skivvy stacker that’s what we call them. A general warehouseman but I was able to do some finagling. I could almost hunt and peck with two fingers on the old Remington’s or whatever they were back then. I got a job, as a chaplain’s assistant for a couple of chaplains. So, I got out of the field and those kinds of things. I was in this barracks and I was ready to go. I would have gone, but they stopped the war. At Camp LeJeune when I first got there and I didn’t get it then why everybody in the place came in either drunk or the smoke from marijuana was very high. This was a high returning group of Vietnam vets. I didn’t really make the connection yet, but I thought, Um. I had a master sergeant a fellow church member like an EE-8. He says, “Did you know that I lock and load my 45 when I come into your barracks?” No, (laughs) anyway that didn’t really phase me back then because I’m still believing everything.
Then I also got married—there’s the first ex [wife] (showing a picture). I should have known— It was December 29, 1972, it snowed eighteen inches. We had an accident on the way to the temple. Her bridesmaid left a dress in the LA airport, another one got snowed in, and the cake got snowed-in, in Hunter. I should have, from a karmic point of view said, Hum, okay I know what I am getting into. Instead I said, “I’m tough. I can handle anything,” so I continued. I brought the wife to Camp LeJeune and we had our first kid there.
Now, digressing for just a minute in 1998, I get a call from the National Institute of VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 9 | P a g e
Health. And they say, Did you know at Camp LeJeune during the years ’67 to ’85 the water was contaminated with trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, and benzene. We bathed in it. We drank it. My first kid was born there my second kid was conceived there. Who would later have a ventricular septal defect a heart defect, which we had him operated on and he’s okay. He’s my pharmacist right now interestingly enough.
I decided—I said, “This Marine Corps sucks,” which I actually knew when I first got there. Vietnam had been winding down and I began to see the guys. One of the guys, my sergeant, on the Onslow Beach detachment him and a corporal were Vietnam vets. I didn’t understand it at the time, but they had been sent by their unit TDYxii to get rid of them. Because they were crazy and I found out why. They took me, and they did this with every new guy what they call FNG. A new guy they would put them in the back of a jeep. Now you’ve got the front two seats and the back seat. Now, the back seat wasn’t tied to anything and when they would hit a dune, it would fly up but that’s where I’m sitting. They took me on a helluva ride, because they wanted to get some excitement, some adrenaline going. They wanted to get my reaction. I didn’t understand that, but I do now.
Anyway, all of those kinds of things still kind of believing the media sold us down the river. And, those Communist Pinkos, those Jane Fonda’s, those you know – Still having kind of a narrow attitude. And then I’m inspired now. I sure as heck want to get out of this darned Marine Corps. I had actually typed up my release paperwork forty-five days early, with my acceptance to BYU [and] took it to the battalion commander. And, he knowing that my wife was pregnant, says, Sergeant Davis you can re-up or extend and then you don’t have to worry about the kid.” Of course, I was thinking not only no, but hell no. But I got out early, [and went] two years at BYU. Then my second kid, the pharmacist, is born with a ventricular septal defect and he had surgery, so that was kind of a—I was into journalism that was my major at BYU journalism and public relations.
WC: But back when you were in the military at some point, you went from having feelings of patriotism and trust and belief in the war. You were stopping Communism and then something happened while you were on active duty maybe at Camp LeJeune where you began to feel differently about the war? Or you began to trust less in the government?
AD: Well, I didn’t trust the system, because I had been jacked around a little bit. I would come pretty close to an Article-15. I’d made sergeant because of the high school ROTC, but I was disenchanted, disillusioned with the military. I don’t think I questioned the Vietnam thing until much later. But some of those experiences now with some of the guys made sense. I just kept truck’n because I’m a survival guy. I’m conditioned to survive, I’m tough.
I had two years of off-duty education at Camp LeJeune [and] went to East Carolina University. So, I’ll always be a Pirate. And those of you who know anything about East Carolina, they are actually playing in a bowl game again. Two years there, then two years at BYU, graduated and wrote for the Daily Universe, and as I was telling Lee. I started thinking outside the box at BYU, because all of a sudden I’m reading all this stuff about VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 10 |
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Watergate. All the President’s Men comes out and I got to go see it. And, all of a sudden everybody wants to be a journalist and they want to report and write the truth. I like to present both sides and let the reader decide what the truth is because usually it’s somewhere in the middle. I was beginning to say, “Hm.” At BYU, I was a critical thinker and some things being told about or being written, especially about Watergate the system, the military system, the government. And guess what? I covered when I was the beat reporter at the Daily Universe the federal agencies. Anyway, I didn’t write any fantastic stories. But I got the award at the end of the year because the VDT’s
xiii were just coming online. Where you could actually type a story in a video display tube and then you could actually hit a button and it [went] to the editor. Somehow I got the award at the end of the year for the mysteriously disappearing story. When I hit the button, the editor never got it. I didn’t write many stories, so they didn’t print many.
I went to the Marine Military Academy as a public affairs practitioner and part-time journalist. Tom Segal who had been a Marine journalist was the public affairs director so I worked for the Marine Military Academy writing news releases and taking pictures and also worked for him part-time as a newspaper writer-photographer, so I got to meet some interesting people.
WC: So this is after the military? After you got out of college?
AD: Right, I graduated from college so about two years of— This was in Texas a small town in south Texas.
WC: How was your feeling about the war or the war’s purpose? How had that been changing in this period of active-duty, separated, going to college.
[1:00:00]
AD: I started reading, All the President’s Men and again, started to question the whole efficacy. The whole value of this—Wait a minute. I’ll go back. In the summer of ‘66 my uncle who had been in the Air Force for seventeen years, came to California while I was in Livermore High School, to visit and he spent the weekend with us. We took him to Travis Air Force Base to fly out to Vietnam. Then in December that year, they had found him floating in the Saigon River. I guess, maybe I began to question then, but I repressed it or whatever. My uncle is found floating down the Saigon River. Something is fishy and this is not right. I have done research since then and after having dealt with his family. Apparently he was a raving alcoholic, which is kind of in my family history too. My other uncle was a Navy chief and he was a closet alcoholic. I began to question a little bit. I couldn’t really put words or emotions, but it was a question that said, something is not right here.
WC: How old were you when that happened?
AD: Um, seventeen probably—Right before I went to the Marine Military Academy.VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 11 |
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WC: So, generally, you’re feeling was that the war was legitimate and what the president is saying is honest.
AD: Yeah.
WC: But you were beginning to have some questions because of a family tragedy?
AD: I digressed a little bit because I kind of repressed that. Well I also repressed my mother dying when I was twelve. I should have brought that up too. I guess that was a trauma. So, that’s kind of affected my relationships.
A: Bill, can I ask a question? So, just from what I’m gathering you started with the Hindenburg and you talked about the tragedy of your mom and the tragedy with your uncle. Is that pretty much the brick that pulled out, that broke down that wall of patriotism too, is it tragedies?
AD: Not yet, because I’m immune to them, okay I just keep truck’n.
A: What about during the war? I’m assuming you probably experienced—
AD: Well again, I saw the guys come back from Vietnam and how screwed up they were. I saw how high the AWOLxiv rates were, but I didn’t put it together into my own personal epiphany. It was kind of, I’ve got to separate it my survival is prime. I wasn’t into that unity consciousness thing yet, that would come years later.
The beginnings of it— My life is born in trauma, experiencing trauma but also repressing rejection. Then also moving— I got to get out of here. You’ve got to have some way out of this you’ve got to retreat and get the heck out of here. So, I was thinking some things that one of my buddies at the Marine Corp Academy, his brother went to Vietnam and got killed. But that was second-hand that wasn’t my experience. So, losing my uncle, oh here it comes again.
My buddy, Leonard Erickson from Livermore, graduates in ’67. And, he was the older guy so he had the car. So all of younger guys we—He has the nice car. Anyway, after I went to the Marine Military Academy. I get a notice that he was killed in Vietnam in the A Shau Valley. I was just continuing [my] education [and working in the] harvest crew. I just thought damn. I didn’t have time to stop [and] process, or think about any of this stuff. I’m tough. I can take anything. So, probably, you’re right. Probably it affected me more than I’d allow or would tell anybody about, but that’s not the way we do it in our house. (laughs) That was our mentality. So, I digressed a little bit. Yes, you’re right, Bill. Some of those things affected me, but I really didn’t process it, I just kept going.
WC: After you left the military and went to college, did you think about it more then? Did you join any veteran’s organizations? Did you know Vietnam veterans at BYU?
AD: No, not at BYU those kinds of things were few and far between. I spent my time trying to VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 12 |
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help get Orrin Hatch elected. I’ve regretted that since, but anyway we’ll get to the epiphany parts later. We had some veterans that got together. We found out that we were all veterans. So, we’d all get in back of the classroom and kind of raise hell and compare notes while the teacher was doing his lecture. I remember one time the instructor was going to throw us out and said, “You guys shut the heck up back there.” But we didn’t (laughs) we didn’t want to be told that. Anyway, I didn’t join any groups. [I] just kind of kept truck’n along.
I got the job at the Academy, but they cut my job. Again, I wanted to be a warrant officer pilot. So, I investigated the Army again. I took the flight aptitude test, which I passed. Then I get in front of the board, the board says, “You actually have good test scores” which surprised the hell out of me, because I don’t do too well on tests. So, I made the 120 or whatever the GCT was and they said, Have you ever thought about being an officer? You could really do well. Okay so anyway, I went to Army OCSxv in 1980 at Fort Benning. [I was] the only one in my family ever to be an officer. I guess I was blazing the trail or whatever. I was a MPxvibranch officer. I did the jump training and all that stuff. Then I was a company— Three of my kids were born military brats. I was a company commander in Germany, and this was in January 1986. The battalion commander comes in the lieutenant colonel; he lays the relief letter on my desk. I read it for about three minutes, and then I start cussing him out. I do remember one thing I said, “It doesn’t matter what SOB you put in this freakn’ chair the same thing is going to happen to him.” Now there was an epiphany for me. I was so pissed and so angry at a freakn’ system. It came out then. Nine months later, he did relieve my successor. I gave him a psychic read but I didn’t know about that stuff then. I wasn’t into that. (laughs)
WC: So, you’d already been in the Marine Corps, you’d graduated from college, and then you went to OCS and joined the Army and rose up thru the ranks to become a company commander in Germany in the eighties?
AD: That’s right, that’s when I got my release but I had a job in public affairs. Because I thought, there’s my out. I can go into journalism, which I did. Me and Willie Haye we ran an award winning paper for a year. (laughs) Then the department of the Army said, “We have to release you from active duty because you have failed to maintain the standards required in the officer course.” So, it was a riff basically, but because I got such a bad OERxviiixvii I took it to the JAG. The JAG looked at it and he started laughing and said, “This is a joke, right?” And I said, “No, it’s not a joke. That’s what my battalion commander said about me.” And he said, “Man, that’s the lowest OER I’ve ever seen.”
[1:10:10]
(laughs) I can laugh about it now but—(laughs)
WC: What rank were you and where were you stationed?
AD: Well mostly, I was stationed in Fort McClellen off and on doing the MP school and Fort Bliss, Texas and then Mannheim and Kaiserslautern, Germany.VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 13 |
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WC: And you were a captain, major?
AD: Right, captain. Then I got out and went to Phoenix in ’88 and worked as a security officer on a nuclear power plant and continued with my Army reserve. I was the XO for a confinement facility unit that they deactivated. My commander got relieved, [and] it brought all of that stuff back. And I said, “How dare they treat people like that.” My systemic or my bureaucratic feelings were coming out not necessarily attached to war. But, I’d seen the system screw so many people by then that I was teetering. They deactivated that unit in Phoenix and I had to go to San Jose, California. I was on a MP brigade and eventually, I made major in the reserves.
Then, I got divorced. (laughs) That was the first ex [wife] you know, with five kids and a divorce. That’s a hell of a lot of child support. My youngest was five, so I’m looking at thirteen years of child support. (laughs) So, anyway I lost another job and then I went to Phoenix and was an assistant manager of a Circle K. Then I was in the hospital, I had kidney stones. Here’s an epiphany. And, the voice says, “Move to Salt Lake City.” I said, “Dang, I only know two people up there. I don’t hunt. I don’t fish. I don’t ski and I hate snow.” I’m kind of convinced that it’s a karma thing. (laughs) My second ex [wife] would say, “No, you came here to marry me.” No, I don’t think so. (laughs) I get along with the second ex [wife] too.
So, another marriage and I did get into some therapy after the first divorce and began processes, anger management, and various things. I worked in a federal halfway house. After, I got into some twelve-step programs, addiction recovery, [and] those kinds of things. Then I felt like I was able to help those kids in the halfway houses because 80 percent were there for drug issue. Then I got a job with UTAxix in ’95 and [have] been driving for fifteen years.
When I got divorced the first time, I was into spirituality, Eastern religions, near-death experiences, and Shamanism. So, those were my interests. So, I began reading about them, indigenous healing spirituality. And, I’ve got some friends that have had near-death experiences and they kind of helped me to understand some things. The final epiphany came—Although in ’91 I still supported the United States. Our unit wasn’t activated because we weren’t able to be trained well enough to deploy. I had a little bit of mixed feelings, like what the heck. We’re bombing Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War in ’91. Something doesn’t sound right, but I’m still there. I began to do a lot of reading on family origin issues, on various abuses, relationship[s], addiction[s] [and] more therapy. I began to understand my family issues and kind of where it had led me to at that point.
In 2003, we invaded Iraq and I said, “Wait a minute, something isn’t right. This’s not right at all.” The slow epiphany was beginning and I had read a lot of history books. I knew there were a lot of things that didn’t add up. At that point, I started— And, over the years I probably got the best Vietnam era group of history books. Many of them are out of print or old or are rare and then I read them all. The Betrayal by William Corson, About Face, Dave Hackworth, A Bright Shining Lie, Neil Sheeham , Secrets of the VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 14 |
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Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg, who by the way was a Marine company commander then worked for RAND
xx and the Defense Department. I began to say, “Wait just a freak’n minute here, something is not right.” I began to dig deeper and deeper and then I got a book about the media coverage in Vietnam. And, then I began to compare and contrast, as you have your history students do. My feelings were right. Then I didn’t have the evidence, now I had the evidence. I knew that invading Iraq was not right. So, here I have my two boys in the 1404-Transportation Company in Show Low, Arizona and that unit had been activated during the Gulf War. I remember that some kids were going to go on their missions and they didn’t go. I kind of kept that in the back of my mind.
In December of 2002, (shows picture) this son next to [the] youngest is called to a mission and is supposed to go to Vladivostok, Russia. I had him over night and I said, “Son, if your unit is activated, you know where you are going?” He said, “Yes dad, I do but mom doesn’t.” And I said, “I understand.” He was pulled off his mission and of course the first ex [wife] calls me up and I held the phone out here, “Yeah, yeah. I understand.” Why don’t you call Church military relations and see what you can find out. It wasn’t my job to try to solve her problems anymore. So, she did and they guy who actually runs it Frank, I can’t remember his name is a retired Air Force colonel. He was actually our stake president in Germany. And he said, “Yes, Sister Davis don’t feel bad, we brought a kid back from Peru, all the way in country to be activated.” That was kind of the under link. At that point, it wasn’t from a religious reason that I opposed it but it was from the whole idea that we can take people to war. And, the more I read and I started writing letters to the editor in 2003, connected with and joined with Veteran’s for Peace and VVAW. Then I started organizing many different events in Salt Lake City, [Utah] in 2004 until 2008 or ’09.
WC: So, were you reading these books on Vietnam to try to understand what was going on in Vietnam to try to gain
[1:20:00]
some clarity about how you were thinking in a fuzzy way about Vietnam during that period? Or was it more about trying to see what similarities there might be between Vietnam and what Sadaam was doing in Kuwait?
AD: Well, both. Both, because I see as I’m beginning to see our foreign policy as I read history has pretty much been the same since Woodrow Wilson, [that’s] my conclusion. So, then I began to read in some of these other books. I have a whole ton of them. If Eisenhower had allowed Ho Chi Minh to have open elections at the Geneva Accords in ’54, there would have been no Vietnam. Now, how many people know that? But we decided to bring a guy out of France, Bao Dai and put him in as our puppet. Then we went through many, many other puppets from Diemxxiiixxi to Longxxii to Huu all the way through. So, as I began looking at it from a historical point of view, but also a journalistic critical thinking point of view. Then I met Ellsberg and heard Howard Zinn talk in 2004. And, I said, “Holy moley, we’ve been (laughs) deceived all this time and where was I?” I VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 15 |
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was a history guy, but I never connected the dots until that time.
WC: How did that make you feel? How’s your trust and faith in the government shifted? And let’s throw patriotism in there too. Has it shifted a lot with all these revelations?
AD: Yes, with my epiphanies, my reading, and my critical thinking. I really kind of came to that maybe a couple of years three-four years before then. I no longer believe in the US Government [and] what they tell us. I no longer believe that we are who we say we are. From my previous experience, I just couldn’t put everything together. I read a couple of years ago, probably the best book on Vietnam. It’s a history of Vietnam by John Prados. It’s a big thick book and he puts it into a very easy to understand context. There’s another one called Dereliction of Duty that follows all of the administration’s missteps from Eisenhower, to Kennedy to Johnson. This guy just made colonel; no I think he actually made brigadier general. He’s a general on active duty. He wrote the book on the missteps, and now he’s part of the misstep that’s happening again, the repeating cycle.
So, I feel cathartic. I’m still pissed. (laughs) So, I take my medication. It’s good to be able to. I got pissed when I did this stuff too, so it wasn’t necessarily therapeutic.
One of the guys here, (showing picture) Gene Barrett, used to get on my bus. He had this Vietnam vet hat on, and he wouldn’t talk to me. I gave the card to his wife and I said, “Have Gene call me.” About six months later at least he starts talking to me. Now come to find out, Gene did very well in Vietnam, worked with the Phoenix Programxxivand special [operations], etc. [He] came back to Fort Hood and he turned to alcoholism and the same kinds of things and they gave him a chapter-14 for misconduct. I said, “Well damn,” here he is working for the state couldn’t hear, needed a new hearing aid, had a cataract on his eye. So, he couldn’t get a license. His employment opportunities were all screwed up. He was my first client that I helped with my veteran’s thing. I said, “Gene, give me the number of your case manager in Vocational Rehab.” So, I called her up and said, “Tell me what Gene needs to get so we can get these two things done for him.” She said, “I need a letter from the VA saying that they won’t do this.” I said, “Well, I have a letter sitting right here, I’m going to send him over with it. You make a copy and give him back the original.” Now it took us two years fighting the votech bureaucracy to get his hearing aid and to get his cataract [taken care of] but now he has a job. That again was another epiphany I said, “You know, we’re not going to stop this crap.” Because number one, after reading Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket” and a bunch of others. I already knew the military industrial complex is going to continue, at whatever it does, no matter what we say.
I have to channel my anger into something. Now this is what I created, although me and the IRS have long since parted ways. When I filled out a twenty-six page IRS form 1023 that says, You are either a public charity or a private foundation. I said, “No I’m not either freak’n one of these. I’m helping Veterans.” I threw three-hundred bucks down the toilet to send a form into the IRS. So, I had a good idea and this is kind of what— I’m still helping veterans with issues, compensation in terms of education outreach, and advocacy. I’ve decided that I’ve helped maybe twenty-five thirty vets, a lot of them Vietnam vets. To either get increases from seventy to one-hundred, eighty to one-VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 16 |
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hundred, or to start all over again. I stopped counting just for my own satisfaction quotient. I’ve helped get over $100,000 for these guys. Now, that’s where I get satisfaction, because I’m fighting the system. Vets have said to me, “Why do I go to war and have to come home and fight for my benefits?” I said, “Because that’s the system. I help them circumvent the system; tweak the system with information [and] handouts. [I give] personal or email advice and I also do the GI rights hotline. I get calls from active duty kids who are having issues. Of course, after having been an NCO and an officer I can sort of direct them through the maze of their situation and give them information that will help them begin to solve the problem.
WC: So, would it be fair to say that what you learned from your experiences was that we can’t stop wars, we can’t stop machinery. So, the best we can do is to help our brothers and sisters when they come home.
AD: Right, a young kid named Jeremy called me because— Here is when it all kind of comes full circle. I don’t know if any of you saw a PBSxxvdocumentary about a company that was in Iraq, came back to Fort Carson, and had all kinds of things happen. Actually, four guys went out one night and one of the three shot and killed one of the others. That was Jeremy’s platoon. Many of those were given Chapter 5-7 convenience of the government. Character disorder, personality disorder the same thing that Brian David Mitchell has. He’s not schizophrenic. He’s narcissist and he has a real personality disorder. But the military doesn’t want to pay from the Defense Budget for the 30 percent that Jeremy was going to get. He doesn’t get his 30 percent from DODxxvi they kick him out on “Other than Honorable.” Then I get him and I say, “We’ve got to go to the Discharge Review Board to upgrade your discharge,” which is just as bureaucratic and complicated as filing for compensation. You have to be a lawyer. [Of] course, I’ve ordered the CD-ROM with all of the regulations, guidelines, checklists, and advocacy information from the military Law Task Force people that I’ve been working with. That’s what it all comes down to, knowledge is power.
WC: That’s what you send out on nearly a weekly basis, right?
[1:29:56]
AD: That’s part of it—
WC: You send sections of it out too—
AD: I actually get this from a retired lieutenant in the Philippines. I send that out because a lot of times it will have good information on filing for compensation or if they are retired on Tri-care. It covers a wide spectrum of issues for veterans or retirees and I have both retirees and veterans on my list that I send out. That again is my premise. Education is paramount, knowing the system or know your enemy know what you are up against. So, that’s kind of what I do. I’ve kind of channeled my energy to helping the younger vets and older vets when they call.VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 17 |
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WC: Have you ever been to Vietnam or have any interest in going?
AD: No, I get all kinds ads from the various magazines I work with the vet centers. They get all the VSO magazines and I’ve looked through those. There are a lot of tours that go back. I’ve suggested that to Rick and some of the other guys. It might be a good healing thing for them to do because the healing process after having dealt with the PTSD, the traumatic brain injuries, and the new stuff that kids have. There’s one Navy guy, a fellow worker Cliff and I’ve been trying maybe five to seven years. I said, “Cliff when are you going to file for your Agent Orange?” Finally, he did it and [it] went from 20 percent to 80 percent and he got money for his kid’s college. So, that’s kind of the satisfaction I get, but on the other hand too in connecting with veterans. These guys have actually written things about some of their experiences. I thought I would just read snippets of some of their epiphany moments and some of their feelings. You know all of these guys Bill. This is from Larry we call him, Big Lar he works at the VA by the way. (laughs)
WC: This is Larry Chadwick?
AD: Larry Chadwick he was in First [Cavalry] he went to the VA to get help. They told him to get in line, quit whining, and you’re not a real veteran anyway. He’s looking for work to feed his small kids and he can’t find a job because he has a$100 a day heroin habit. Then he goes to an anti-war rally because he knows every other person there on some level. [He] knows he can relate to them because war is wrong so, in essence that saved Larry’s life. Interestingly enough, Larry and I are both from California. Well, Larry is kind of from Utah.
The guy, his name is Jack, good ole Jack. Anyway, he started a program called, Swords to Plowshares, which is still in operation in San Francisco. Jack I can’t remember his last name. They used this as the pilot project for what is now called the Vet Centers. They’re not on the VA campus they’re out in the communities. They’re less threatening. So, that people can just walk in and get therapy, get job information, and all of those kinds of things. Jack and Big Lar were good friends. They were both kind of crawling around the tenderloins in San Francisco with heroin problems. Now this is Rick— I actually have the entire book that he wrote, and Rick you’ve heard him speak probably sometimes.
WC: Rick came to this campus about a dozen years ago for the first time. He was introduced to me by Dr. Jackie Patravich who is a psychiatrist at the VA. My wife and I knew her and her husband from Colorado and they happened to come to Salt Lake. We happened to come to Utah Country and we hooked up on a hike one day up in the mountains. I said, “Jackie I’m really interested in having a vet come and talk to my Vietnam class. Would you be interested in putting a note up on your board for people who come thru for counseling for PTSD?” And say, Hey, this guy down in UVSCxxvii is looking for someone to come down. Rick and I connected and had lunch. He said, “Okay, I will come down” and he stood in a packed room, in Center Stage. We had to get a bigger room and he talked for an hour and a half. First, a psychologist who runs that program was there—VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 18 |
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AD: Dr. Allen?
WC: I don’t remember his name. Then Jackie was there as a psychiatrist who specializes in PTSD and they talked a little bit about the clinical issues. Then Rick got up and talked for over an hour plus and no one drew a breath the entire time. He pulled the wallet out—
AD: To show the picture—
WC: and the picture of the man that he had killed a member of the Viet Cong. And, he has had the picture made a bit bigger. He held it up like this and said, “This is the man I shot thru the chest.” After he got out of the military, he’s not from Utah but I think he came to Salt Lake—
AD: He’s from California—
WC: to go to the violin making school that’s downtown, I think. But he was so affected by the war that he couldn’t finish. He’s been in treatment several times a week since then.
I asked him the same question, “Have you ever thought about going back? And what you could do is see if you could find the family whose husband or father owned that wallet.” And it’s happened there have been TV shows that have been made. People go back and say, I think this belongs to you and it makes for some very interesting relationships. Rick said, “I’ve thought about that. I’m not ready to do it.”
AD: No, he’s not (laughs)—
WC: But this was ten or more years ago. I see him periodically and I hope to ask him again. Have you thought about going back?
AD: Yeah, I called Rick [last name] and said, “Hey I’m going down to do Bill’s thing. [Do] you want to come along and shoot the bull and whatever?” He says, “No it’s a little too long for me.” This is Rick and he says, (reading from what Rick wrote) “We were never allowed to talk about our experiences, nobody wanted to know. I want to expose to others, the horrific mental and physical stress that war is to the people who actually fight it. I’m tired of holding them inside. Flashbacks occur, frequently at times they are queued by external senses, such as smells or sights other times by actions or people or situations. Still other times, Vietnam is just there, all of a sudden. I don’t know why it can fully occupy my mind constantly for days and nights. Vietnam is in my head forever.
Now this is Gene [Barrett]. Gene finally—The one that I helped, finally wrote down some things. (Reading) “Vietnam was a war of ambush and surprise. A relentless war with no front, no place to retreat to, and no place for rest. We became addicted to high-tension, living etched forever in our minds of the daily traumas and hellish experiences. I can still hear the sounds that haunted me, smell the smells that lingered in the jungle coupled with the fear and pressure of combat. We spent sixty days at one time in the jungle with just enough water to drink. Necessity hardened us. We learned how to VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 19 |
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survive on nerves alone. I thought to myself what have we become, but it wasn’t life threatening and went on eating. Not only have we become hardened but we learned a sensitivity that only men in combat can teach.”
This one is Nikko. The chapter is named the “Nikko Shock Chapter.” Nikko survived Hamburger Hillxxviii he was a medic. I’m going to read you a couple of things and then I will tell you the rest of the story. He was a conscientious objector, protested the war with the takeover of Columbia prior to his going in.
[01:40:11]
(Reading, “Nikko Shock Chapter”) “I conscientiously and deliberately took one man’s life something artificially to both my morality and my mission. I had gone to Vietnam for the express purpose of saving lives. How could I ever again claim to be a peaceful and non-violent person?” Basically, what he had to do is, a couple of troops were being pinned down by a sniper he had to low crawl up to the three guys, take out a 45 and kill the sniper, so then he could assist the three guys. That’s what he’s talking about here. (Reading, “Nikko Shock Chapter”) “My experiences in fourteen months of battle not only convinced me of the absolute futility of war, but they destroyed my soul. My own morals were severely corrupted. Everything I believed in was cast aside in the name of self-preservation. Once, I actually strangled a fellow soldier in order to save him from spending the rest of his life as a vegetable. He had received a massive head wound. (Pause) I think of the ones who lost their lives in battle were the lucky ones. We the living felt the immense loss of our innocence and the destruction of our morality. No one wins in a war like that. (Pause) I helped bury my feelings in booze and drugs. I became a daily drinker. As long as I was under the influence, it would dissipate the anger and the angst for a while. In ’97, PTSD struck with full force, flashbacks on a daily basis, I would go two or three days without sleep. And when I finally did sleep, I could only sleep for a few hours and then I would—”
I got to know Nikko he moved here in 2003, and immediately we connected. I would call him at least once a week just to see how he was doing. A lot of times I would go to his house and he was tying one on or he was trying to sleep. One time he was into the anti-war thing and I would always pick him up and take him to the protests. One time he had a grand mal seizure and completely fainted. And, they had to take him to the hospital. We finished the rally then we went to his house to see if he was okay. We drove up in front of his house and I see Nikko walking down Fifth East totally away from his home. They had, the VA had put him on a bus to go home. He still hadn’t recovered from his grand mal seizure [and] he’s walking down Fifth East. So, we run up from his house, which is on Hollywood, this way. We run up and say, “Nikko come here let’s take you home.” “I’m looking for my house.” I say, “Come on” so we took him to the house. It took another hour of us talking to him to bring him back. What had happened was the alcoholism had caused the grand mal seizures and he would totally black out. I spent a lot of time with Nikko. Actually, one time they did an intervention from the VA and the hospice. They wanted to take his keys. I was very emotional when I said, “This man has been through so much hell the only way that he can deal with his anger and stop from VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 20 |
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hurting himself or other people is to drink the alcohol and stay here. Now, that’s a helluva problem, but, that’s where we are at.” And, as I described to the people in the intervention, Nikko was bawling like a baby. After everybody left, I said, “It’s okay man. How come you got upset?” He said,”Because you were telling them exactly what I wanted to tell them, but I couldn’t.” We became tight close friends. A lot of my favorite pictures are with Nikko (showing pictures). That was in a class at Salt Lake Community College, leading the marches here. Participating with Scott and I think we have him here in one of Kathy’s classes, we’re doing the limbo. Showing kids what the times were like. I teach outside the box in order to understand Vietnam you have to understand Frisbees, the limbo, and Woodstock. I helped kids understand historically what was going through our minds when I gave the presentations.
I left for vacation in 2006 [Nikko] called me and he said, “I need some food.” So, I took him some food. I kind of felt like that would be the last time I would see him. I had to go with the wife to see a daughter-in-law. I gave him a hug and told him I loved him. And, about ten days later, I got a call from his lady friend, saying they just found Nikko. He had a grand mal and basically blacked out. His head had hit the table and then he hit the floor. There was so much trauma that he expired from that and he was in there for ten days. I had some of the other guys, Dr. Bob and Gene, I said, “Check on Nikko, because I’m going to be gone.” We don’t like our brothers to die alone and that’s kind of one of my regrets that I wasn’t able to be there. His ex-wife came from California and we had a nice memorial service and get-together.
To me it’s about the brotherhood. The guys who survived aren’t the heroes; they’re blaming themselves every day for surviving. The lucky ones are the ones that they left behind. [They’re] dealing with the PTSD, the TBI, xxixthe guilt, anger, and shame. It’s my privilege, to hopefully have made a small difference in their lives.
I call Rick up his birthday is on December seventh, that’s an easy one to remember. I said, “Rick happy birthday. Do you want to go with me?” He said, “Na.” Sometimes you have to understand [that] as much as they like you they can’t connect with you, because it’s too scary number one and then their fear of loss. The one guy that they got close to in Vietnam, Rick and he swore he would never get close to anybody again. It’s almost like he’s daring me, I dare you to get close to me. (laughs) I understand the dynamics of that and I know that’s just the way it is. I have another friend who did three tours in Vietnam and he and I have gotten tight the last year or so. I told him, “I really look up to you because you spent three tours and you came and took your medals and tossed them over the fence.” He’s really one of the neatest guys. I’m connecting with these guys on a personal level not just to help veterans, but on a personal level. So, if I can help their quality of life, that’s good, but just the friendship.
Bill Gasner, another Vietnam vet friend of mine who drives a bus. I guess I’m kind of surrounded by veterans whether it’s at work or wherever I’m and maybe that’s my life’s work is to do what I can.
[1:49:39]VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 21 |
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WC: I want to ask you one more question in this setting where you are talking to students who are in school now, and students who will be at this university in years to come. If there is any message, that you would like to leave for students now and five ten twenty years from now, what would that be?
AD: Well, summing it up, I would say, war is probably the ultimate violation of moral values, the ultimate failure of conflict resolution. But, because it’s big business it sells. There are defense contractors and sub-contractors in every district in every state. It means jobs and it’s so interconnected with jobs. Good paying jobs, jobs with access, jobs with lobbyists, jobs who have access to congressmen and senators. We’re not going to stop that. What I talk about to kids on the bus I say, “We have to start the revolution.” One or 2 percent of the billionaires on the top, I think there are 1100 of them now. We have to take care of ourselves. We have to connect with each other. If there’s something we can do to help each other, we have to do it. Not because we can pay them or they can pay us, but because we volunteer. Because we’re changing the consciousness of the planet the revolution has started. But it’s not about governments because, I personally no longer believe in any government. Especially this one it’s just as corrupt and just as blighted and convoluted as the governments we’re trying to tell— We’re trying to tell Iraq how to have a government. (laughs) We’re trying to tell Afghanistan how to have a government. We’re not a good example of that at all.
The solution, as I was talking about before the interview. The financial I’m reading a lot of books now on the financial issues what caused the real estate, the dot com bubbles and all of these. The financial things in this country are so complicated that the average person doesn’t know. But finances affect everybody whether they are buying a house, or a car, credit ratings. We have the environmental issues. We have the financial issues [and] we have the war issues. All of those are interconnected, if you tweak one thing you cause three more problems. It’s not that simple. It’s much more complicated. We need critical thinkers to be able to think outside the box because the problems we have are so complicated in the box. You’re not even going to become close to solving them unless you think way outside the box. That to me, means bringing in the spiritual forces that are in the fourth and fifth dimension. Now some people think that’s a little weird.
I can actually tell when people get on the bus, I’ve had fifteen years to practice it. I can pick up things about certain people, I can hone in. I kind of know the kind of person you are or what I can say to inspire you, or to help you along your path. Some people would call that just good coaching or career advice. I say, I gave you a physic reading, but that’s not what it is. So, let us connect with each other. Let us connect with spiritual forces that are going to help us to make a transition to a whole new consciousness, a whole new paradigm. That’s really, what all of this is all about it’s about understanding history. Not necessarily because we’re going to repeat it, I mean we have seen it so many times. But history is about people, it’s about working together, it’s about changing each other’s lives and participating in each other’s lives. I guess to make a long story short, is all this other stuff is not going to change.VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 22 |
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Just in closing, this is the last Army Times and it concerns a college kid. Here’s a college kid he’s in—What college is he in, Virginia Tech obviously. (reading article) “Iraq War vet whose college essay about his addiction to killing in war got him suspended and sent to undergo a psychiatric exam.” Now basically, all he said was, “It feels good to kill in so many words.” He told the truth, it does. There’s nothing like it, because you are the one still standing the other person is gone, he’s down. That’s addicting, my own two sons are addicted, they’re cops in civilian life. So, now they have the Iraq addiction and now they are cops. It’s psychological, it’s physical, [and] it’s spiritual. But if you tell the truth, like this kid did (laughs) then you are suspended from college. There’s the paradox. You have to speak your truth, but you have to know your audience. If they’re going to be able to accept it, or to question it, or put it into some sort of a context, which many people can’t especially in Utah.
WC: Let me end by asking, Josh or Lee if they have a question.
A: Yeah, I have one question; I noticed this sticker right here on your briefcase, which says, “Honor the Warrior not the War.” I see a lot of bumper stickers, which say, “Support the Troops” when you see those or read them what do you say. There’s so much behind that it’s kind of like a catch-22. What do you do when you see that, how would you respond to that?
AD: This is kind of a conundrum it’s a Zen kōan a paradox as it were in terms of understanding. Again, people because of the dumbing down of America, the educational system etcetera, which is a whole different discussion people in the United States can barely read at an eighth grade reading level. Which is what the newspapers are written therefore, when people see something that says, “Support our Troops” that means support the war and everything the government does. But for those of us, who question, we say, Wait a minute. I have a bumper sticker that says, “Support the Troops Bring them Home Now.” That’s not patriotic, that’s not nationalistic depending on what your definitions of patriotism and nationalism are. Now we know that the Germans, after the Beer Hall Putsch and Hitler ascended to power, there was nothing more nationalistic than the Nazis in Germany. Now we can compare and contrast that to George Bush’s statement where he says, “You are either with us or against us.” It sounds good on a sound bite, but it’s not realistic. Sometimes you just can’t explain that you support the troops, but you don’t support the war. It’s very difficult for people to separate that out. But you can try in your own way. You can say, “I happen to know many veterans who are against war.” Maybe that will lead to an opening where you explain that there’s a difference. There’s no way you can win a war on terrorism. I was the counter- terrorism officer at Fort Bliss you can’t win a war on terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic. I think the best definition of— From the Rand Corporation good old what’s his name? I forget his name. He said, “Terrorism is violence for effect for the larger audience.” That’s what we’re doing here. We have the media and we’re spinning something. We create history in the moment by our spin and our perceptual devices. So, in other words we’re leading people by the nose in essence. People here in Utah, for the most part are not going to understand there’s a difference between the war and supporting the troops. Sometimes, I don’t even bother to get into those discussions because it’s almost irrelevant and it’s superfluous and it doesn’t even VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 23 |
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accomplish anything unless people are more open to what that means to them.
[2:00:13]
If they have a son who has gone to war if they have a dad who has gone to war.
They don’t understand the dynamics of how that changes a family and how that can cause irreparable damage to three to four generations. My oldest son, interestingly enough hopefully, is getting out of the hospital he had a brain aneurism. Now I hope it’s not related to any of the Gulf War toxic substances. But, I asked him one time, “Son, who was your hardest coach?” I thought he would answer, “Oh, my high school football coach.” He said, “No, you were.” That was like a smack upside the head. I knew I was hard on you because I wanted you to be the best player, because I didn’t want the other kids to say, He is playing because he’s the coach’s kid. I wanted him to be good, and he was. It’s like the war it causes damage that’s irreparable. So, there’s not an easy answer to your question. But you guys in here and the young lady at least you’re more open. You’ve studied. You’ve critically analyzed history you’ve looked at various civilizations rise and fall. You’re aware of what causes those kinds of things. And, of course, Bill here is keeping you up on how you can compare and contrast the past with what is happening now and that’s where your epiphany comes. It’s like we’re doing the same thing. I don’t remember who said, The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again, and expecting different results. That’s kind of what we are doing if we look at it as life’s experience as an individual experience and as a collective experience. If we don’t do something to step out of our individual experience, so we can connect and make that connection better. But most veterans tend to isolate they tend to stay by themselves. If I don’t hear from Doctor Bob or somebody. I call them up once a month and say, “Hey, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Over.”xxx He understands what I’m saying. (laughs)
WC: So do I.
AD: In fact, it was funny he came up one weekend when the wife was out of town and we sort of had our little party. Anyway he thought that I was supposed to bring the extra stuff to drink and I said, “No I thought that you were going to bring it.” He goes and gets his little wine box and I said, “Man this is good stuff where did you get it?” The University of Utah was losing badly that weekend so it was not a celebration it was a (laughs) squelching our feelings. (laughter) But that’s kind of what I do with these guys. If I don’t hear from them then I say, “What is going on come on? Come up we will watch the ballgame.” The wife kind of let me know when I was too open about the party thing she wasn’t real happy with our party thing. I guess I’ll have to go down to Doctor Bob’s for the next party. (laughs)
WC: Lee did you have any questions?
AD: Any questions anything— It’s very complex because our personality and our interactions with people form our attitudes, opinions and beliefs. And we don’t want those changed. Because that means if I change my attitude, what does it mean about eighteen years of VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 24 |
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my life? Did that mean anything? Well it means losing my buddy Leonard Erickson in the A Shau Valley and my uncle, found dead drunk in the Saigon River that whole freak’n war was not worth those two lives. That’s what it means to me, because it’s personal and I take things personally (laughs) that’s one of my issues. (laughs)
WC: Well, thank you very much and I think with that we’ll end the interview. We’re very grateful Aaron for the information you have left for students now and in the future.
AD: It’s fun because I get to do it in different ways.
END INTERVIEW
[2: 05:04]
i Three meals
ii Vietnam Veterans Against War
iii The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
iv PTSD
v for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
vi Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
vii Brigham Young University
viii Personal Licensing Advisory Circular
ix Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
x Armed Forces Qualification Test
xi Non Commission Officer
xii Temporary Duty
xiii Video Display Tube
xiv Absent Without Leave
xv Officer Candidates School
xvi Military Police
xvii Officer Evaluation Record
xviii Judge Advocate Generals Corps
xix Utah Transit Authority
xx Research ANd Development
xxi Ngo Dintt Diem
xxii Nguyen Phan Long
xxiii Tran Van Huu
xxiv Controversial Countersurgency
xxv Public Broadcasting System
xxvi Department of Defense
xxvii Utah Valley State College
xxviii Battle of Hamburger Hill fought May 1969
xxix Traumatic Brain Injury
xxx An expression of shock

VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee:
Aaron M. Davis
Interviewer:
William Cobb
Date of Interview:
10 December 2010
Place of Interview:
George Sutherland Archives Orem, Utah
Recordist:
Brent Seavers
Recording Equipment:
Zoom Recorder H4n
Panasonic HD Video Camera AG-HM C709
Transcribed by:
Audio Transcript Edit
Kimberly Williamson
Transcript Final Edit:
William Cobb
Cover Summary
Kimberly Williamson
Complete and posted
Reference:
WC=William Cobb (Interviewer)
AD=Aaron Davis (Interviewee)
A=Audience
Brief Description of Contents:
Aaron Davis attended the Marine Military Academy during high school where he became the student body president and the battalion commander. He served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and upon his return a draft letter was waiting for him so he decided to enlist in the Marines. He talks about his training in San Diego and infantry training at Camp Pendleton, being stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, and interacting with Vietnam veterans. He speaks about an early release from the Marines, attending college, and working for the Marine Military Academy. Davis continues with his story of enlisting in the Army and being sent to Officer Candidates School, rising to company commander in Germany, and returning to civilian life. Currently, Davis resides in Herriman, Utah.
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as "uh" and false starts and stops in conversations are not included in transcription. All additions to transcript are noted with brackets.VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 2 | P a g e
AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION
[19:17]
WC: Today is Friday December 10, 2010, it is nine am and my name is William Cobb. I’m a professor of history at Utah Valley University and today is part of the Vietnam Era Oral History project. We are interviewing Aaron Davis.
WC: So, welcome Aaron to the interview.
AD: Thank you, Bill.
WC: I want to start with some very general biographical information and then want to move into the period of your life before you were drafted, the period before you went on to active duty, which is probably be when you went into basic training. So let’s start with me asking you your full name.
AD: Aaron Michael Davis.
WC: And your address?
AD: 14292 Copper Oaks Drive, Herriman, Utah 84096
WC: Date of birth?
AD: 08-29-50
WC: Place of birth?
AD: Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
WC: And were you raised someplace other than where you were born?
AD: Yes, my dad was a World War II veteran. He was on Midway when the war started. They had just split the battalion, they sent half to Wake Island and he stayed on Midway. Wake Island fell to the Japanese thirteen days after Pearl Harbor but they attacked Wake, Midway, and Pearl Harbor. In a historical perspective, since we just finished December seventh, a day that will live in infamy that has affected my family from that particular time. My dad was raised the son of a World War I veteran, my grandfather, and he was a sharecropper that got out of World War I. My dad was born in south Texas and these were Depression years, very difficult. We are talking maybe between a dime and twenty-five cents a day were the wages. My dad decided to join the Marine Corps for three hot’si and twenty-one dollars per month that was big money back then. So, you will see this kind of unfold in a monetary sort of way. Then World War II happened, he was on VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 3 | P a g e
Midway for the Japanese attack on December seventh and for the June sixth ‘42 large naval battle. If you see some of the footage of the battle of Midway, you will see some guys in weird looking short tin hats, they look like the Brits. Which they were really old; firing thirty caliber anti-aircraft guns [and] that was my dad. He was shooting at the Japanese planes. Then he was on Quadulan and finished up on Okinawa. Then I was the World War II baby that waited until 1950, which was another ominous year. If you look at what happened with Korea the Chinese invaded Tibet. So, you look at some other interesting historical juxtaposition.
We moved from Colorado to Mesa, Arizona where my dad had always wanted to be a teacher. He went to Arizona State College, which is now called Arizona State University. He worked part-time to get his teaching degree and then he went to work in Flagstaff, Arizona teaching high school for five years. During this time, my dad was always a very stern disciplinarian. He had a very short temper, and I didn’t understand any of that back then. We used to call it 1000-yard stare battle fatigue all kinds of different things. But now that the American Psychiatric Association through Bobby Moller and some others from VVAW iiputting pressure on them in 1980s to put it into DSMiii as a psychical disorder. It’s called posttraumatic stress disorderiv. So, anyway back to the history. Does anybody have a parent who was a teacher?
A: I did.
AD: Sometimes that is difficult, my dad was a perfectionist, okay. You’re going to do it and do it right and do it my way. I was always an outside of the box thinker and I would say, “Wait just a darn minute, I know there’s another way of doing things and mine is just as good as his” from age five on up. But that is kind of the way it was. I was kind of spare the rod and spoil the child, and he didn’t spare it. I look back and I will show my family— My kids pretty much turned out the same way I did.
WC: After you were born in Glenwood, you went down to Arizona?
AD: Mesa, my brother was born there. He’s three years younger. He’s a retired Air Force master sergeant. Then we moved to Flagstaff, Arizona where he was a high school teacher and we went through this town called Needles, California in 1958. And, we stayed at this hotel and it didn’t go below three digits until after midnight and we said, Anybody in their right mind would not live in this freak’n place. A year later, my dad gets a job teaching elementary school in Needles, California. (laughter)
AD: Those were some of my formative elementary school times.
WC: You alluded to your family. Tell me, are you married and do you have children and how many and how old are they?
AD: (laughs, showing picture) this is a picture of the family. This is the first ex[wife] and her husband. They just returned from a missionv from Spain. Some of you can relate to that. I have eight grandkids; one of them is fourteen, so when your grandkids get to be VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 4 | P a g e
teenagers you kind of go, wow. So, yes, I’m currently married for the third time. The wife is right here. (showing picture) She was married to her ex[husband] for thirty-one years. Interestingly enough, we were both married LDS
vi in the Salt Lake Temple. She was in a very abusive marriage for that long, but she stayed for the kids. Anyway, again as I mentioned, we only disagree on two things, religion and politics. We do have some spirited discussions, but I don’t make it like I did with my first ex [wife]. Like I’m wrong and you are right. I allow her—My hot-button issue is war and its related to the economy and her hot button issue is abortion. Having been a Republican and working on Orrin Hatch’s— Anyway I’m jumping ahead of myself that was my BYUvii thing. We’ve got to learn how to love and respect one another and although we know there are going to be differences. My daughter, interestingly enough, is graduating next week from Northern Arizona University to be a teacher, after two to three careers and two kids later. Sometimes we are slow learners (laughter) or just happen to have a lot of experiences in order to get where we are suppose to be. It’s interesting that my dad was a teacher and my first ex[wife] is a teacher. There’s a picture of the first ex[wife]. Interestedly enough both the first ex[wife] and the dad were very matter of fact black and white. I’m not one of those people. I’m very much a shades of gray continuum kind of person. Some days psychologically, physically, or emotional were somewhere wavering in the middle and then without my medication, I go Pfffft.
WC: Narrow those feelings down little bit, when you are in high school or college before you went into the military. How did you feel about what was happening in Vietnam?
AD: The earliest I can remember in grade school in Needles was we had these elections, straw poll if you will, in the classrooms and the first one –
[30:00]
Well, we’ve got this thing called the TV set. I have to digress a little bit. I used to listen to the Lone Ranger on the radio that’s kind of showing my age. And it was really quite fascinating, but then everybody got this black and white TV and then you could see the Lone Ranger. So, TV kind of influenced our opinions, attitudes, and belief systems. We will get into the media thing a little later—But I began to— I fell in love with Annette on the Mickey Mouse Club—
WC: Who didn’t? (laugher)
AD: Let’s see, who else, Connie Stevens and of course when Laugh-In came in, I’m still in love with Goldie Hawn. Be that as it may, I remember the first time I saw a disaster. I saw the black and white film footage of the Hindenburg when it exploded in 1938, holy— I had nightmares for a week about the damn thing. Not realizing that I was very sensitive, caring, and compassionate although I realized it because of conditioning. And again, my dad was a Marine. Everything was you know, he was not much into the feelings thing. I kind of became a little tougher. I guess. I bucked up. In order to survive sometimes in your family you have to just tough it out. And so, that’s kind of what I did. I’ll never forget— Just going back to my dad. I was in fifth grade taking this VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 5 | P a g e
psychological test. I was in the other fifth grade class so, I wasn’t in his. Thank goodness. But he was looking over my shoulders seeing the answers that I put down and I will never forget this comment, he said, “I can’t believe a son of mine would answer those questions as wrong as you did.” Now at that particular point, maybe we can call it an epiphany. I was pissed. I wanted to get out and be independent and do things on my own and I questioned everybody. I started— I believe at that moment my critical thinking. I said this is BS. I’ll not be like Bobby. ( laughter)
I guess I sort of made a circle. I was that way to begin with, but then the process of growing up hormones, inadequacies, and a lot of different things and then just surviving. So, that really was an epiphany for me. I went back when I was in therapy a few years ago and looked at my report cards thru that period and I said, “What the hell was he talking about?” I got good grades until that fifth grade epiphany when I said, I don’t care. All I’m doing is playing ball and chasing the girls to hell with this academic stuff. Again, this was kind of a turning point. Now here’s a paradox. I’m presenting to my daughter next week when she graduates a term paper that my dad [wrote] on me [about] my psychological and my physical growth while he was getting his teacher’s certification at Northern Arizona University. As I went back a couple of weeks ago and read it again (laughs) okay—Really interesting. I’m going to present that to her, simply because there are only two things I have from my dad, a Marine Corps blanket from World War II and that term paper. I’ll present her with the term paper that even has some of my little scribbling and colorings from kindergarten or the pre-school.
I kind of went into myself. I knew what I was feeling, but I didn’t work well with people. They would either hack me off or they wouldn’t accept me for who I was. So, we moved to Needles, California, where as I mentioned, elementary and junior high were very difficult for me. Although, I did excel and the only way I could get attention from my dad was throwing a ball at him and he liked baseball. I could get his attention and he would even throw it back occasionally. Then we moved to Livermore, California and I was a freshman in high school and did pretty well. The Bay area has always been an area of diverse people and a lot of different thoughts and people’s cultures. I’ve always kind of liked that.
Then in 1965, some of my buddies, including Scott Camil here (showing picture) when they were going into Vietnam. I was reading Life Magazine and also watching the news. I found a way out of this whole dilemma. There was an article in there about the Marine Military Academy. The only military school in America patterned after the customs and traditions of the United States Marine Corps. I said, “There’s my out. I can finally get the heck out of here.” So, my dad said, “You earn the four-hundred dollars. You can go to military school.” I got a job at my uncle’s wheat harvest crew cutting wheat in the Mid-West – That’s another interesting story. I did that for three summers actually. [I] went to the Marine Military Academy and after three years, became the student body president. Although, it wasn’t a popularity contest, I was appointed as the battalion commander. Because outwardly, I can portray a wonderful image of being in charge and telling people what to do. In my command voice, Company Command “inaudible” so that really excited them. Here, I’m in the classroom not doing very well at all these doggone subjects that I VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 6 | P a g e
wasn’t ready for. I took general math, general science, and all of that easy stuff at Livermore High School. But at the Academy, this is a naval college prep school. So two days into my chemistry class and I thought, Oh, my gosh. I can remember NACL or H
2O, but that’s it. I’m not doing this anymore. Of course, history Major Thompson was my history teacher and he was good. Plus he coached the basketball team and that was better. Then I got out of the classroom and played sports. [I] did very well, in 1969— We just had a reunion of some of the guys after forty years in Reno in March. We hadn’t seen each other for some forty-odd years. We got together and shot some hoops and it was kind of fun. We had an undefeated team, which we had 150 kids in the high school. We played the local competition and I remember they beat us seventy-five to nothing in football.
WC: When you were in high school how did you feel about what was going on in Vietnam and where did that information come from?
AD: Good question, Bill. I think it was my third year; there were some guys that the military sent in to come to the mess hall with us and sit down. They were wounded from Vietnam, okay. I remember talking to them about various things. They were not straight with me. The one guy said, “There is only one color and that’s green the Marine Corps green.” And I had begun to read a little bit, I knew that there were racial problems. In the bush everybody is together for survival, but when you get back to the hill
[40:00]
or your bunkers everybody goes their own way. They hang out with the guys doing the dap or the guys doing the drinking, or whatever. Again, there is a cognitive dissidence that I was beginning to see as I watched some of the coverage of Vietnam, I still believed in America. I still believed that we were the good guys. I still believed that our cause was just – Whatever at that point.
I did really well in the military as the battalion commander. [I] got the awards and led all the parades and gave all the commands. [I] finally had some girlfriends the last year and I didn’t know how to do any of that, another long story. [I had] a lot of inadequacies a lot of things from my childhood. But when I graduated from there, I went on a mission for the LDS Church. Now for whatever reason at the time we’re all into that particular time, doing what we think we should be doing, so that’s what I did. I served an LDS mission in the northern states. The Chicago area the mission covered Illinois, Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula of Michigan, part of Iowa, and part of Indiana. I did very well because I was gaining some self-confidence or at least portraying self-confidence. (laughs) Again there is the cognitive dissidence. I rose to become a traveling assistant. I was a leader again. I was able to motivate people and get them to do things and whatever. When I came home there was a draft letter setting there, because you have a 4-D deferment to serve a LDS mission, back in the days. I did some things; the economy was not very good back then. I did some part-time jobs, a busboy I worked in a warehouse. Things didn’t work well. All I wanted to do was play golf and chase the women. I couldn’t go back home again. You can’t go back home once you’ve been away that many years because if it’s oppressive VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 7 | P a g e
before, it’s oppressive then. I said, “There’s got to be a way out of this thing,” because I’m always looking for a way out. I said, “Alright, let’s check out the military.” I was going to be warrant officer pilot, because when I was at the Marine Military Academy, I got my private pilot license as part of the curriculum. You had the ground school and then you had the flying time. So I had my private license. I wanted to fly and had actually taken the test from one of the guys that I met on the mission that was a selection officer with the Marine Corps because I wanted to do PLAC
viii aviation. However, then I get home and the draft notice is sitting there and I have thirty days. I want to be a warrant officer and they said, No, your test scores are too low, because I don’t do well on tests. Going back to my high school years, I go back and look at my SAT’s and my ACT’s scores what was I thinking then. Well now, I know what I was thinking because I had ADHDix. Discounting the fact that my dad had PTSD (laughs). We could say now that I was abused. I was never comfortable sitting anywhere for very long or concentrating. Now I can actually do it with my medication, so that helps.
I think the Army has the best opportunities for a warrant officer because that is what I wanted to do but they said, No, I think we ought to send you to Air Traffic Control School. Then I said good-bye to people at church for about three weeks and I got tired of waiting and had to get out of there. I went across the hall to the Marine recruiter and I said, “What can you guarantee me and I want to ship tomorrow.” He said, “Can do.” Marine recruiters are pretty good they will get you into things that you never thought you could get into. I told them I didn’t do well on the AFQTx test, remember the old AFQT we all had to take. I think that I made a twenty-five on the darn thing because it had these stupid tools and stuff and my dad was a mechanic before he was a teacher and that was the last thing I wanted to do was to help him with the freak’n car. I didn’t know what tools they were because I had no idea what they were. The Marine recruiter comes in and says, “Come on back here in the back room” and he has the test right there and here are the answers to the test. We’re going to take you to the AP’s tomorrow, you’re going to get a good grade and get guaranteed aviation school. We’ll ship you, ten-four and he did! (laughs) So, I’m a living testimony that recruiters can do anything it takes to make their mission.
WC: So how are you feeling during this entire period? What do you know about Vietnam and how do you feel about the war?
AD: Again, I’ve been conditioned in the classroom and I think by the media and by popular opinion that we were fighting the Domino effect. That’s what we were told, that it was right to be there, and I continued to believe that. I questioned it maybe intellectually but not the other ways. I believed that I would go fight for my country. I would kill Commies that’s what I believed that a Marine was supposed to do. Again the Marine Corps training those changes are forever. Little did I realize—Course I had been conditioned by my dad, the Marine Military Academy for three years and an LDS mission and then the Marine Corps. In looking back I said, “My gosh, I was institutionalized.” But I resented that paradoxically almost like a caged person. Again, I did not question it a lot but I was ready to go.VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 8 | P a g e
WC: Where was most of your information coming from in that period did you watch the news every night?
AD: I’ve always been an avid newspaper reader. My dad and I would always fight to see who got the paper first. Now, I knew he paid for the thing. And, he always let me know, I pay for it, so I read it first. (laughs) [Be]cause I want information, okay? I’ve always been an information guy. I want to know what was going on in the world. I was still at that point very pro war believing in the United States being right in stopping the Domino effect. So, I didn’t question it.
I went through my training at the Marine Corp Depot in San Diego and then infantry training at Camp Pendleton. Then I shipped out to Memphis Naval Air Station where they were going to make me a structural mechanic. I looked at that and when you have a private license you can be an air radio operator, you know about navigation and all those kinds of things. They wanted those kinds of jobs and that’s what I wanted. But they said, Your test scores are not high enough. Again, I got limited, so I cop an attitude because people have been messing with me for a long time. I’m kind of a self-starter. I got up and did my job cleaning the head or the bathroom. Then some NCOxi comes up to me and says, Hey get in here and clean the bathroom. I said, “Find somebody else.” So, that didn’t endear me to the NCO’s obviously. I got in a little trouble and then I said, “Take this structural mechanic thing and stick it.”
[50:00]
They sent me to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina to be a skivvy stacker that’s what we call them. A general warehouseman but I was able to do some finagling. I could almost hunt and peck with two fingers on the old Remington’s or whatever they were back then. I got a job, as a chaplain’s assistant for a couple of chaplains. So, I got out of the field and those kinds of things. I was in this barracks and I was ready to go. I would have gone, but they stopped the war. At Camp LeJeune when I first got there and I didn’t get it then why everybody in the place came in either drunk or the smoke from marijuana was very high. This was a high returning group of Vietnam vets. I didn’t really make the connection yet, but I thought, Um. I had a master sergeant a fellow church member like an EE-8. He says, “Did you know that I lock and load my 45 when I come into your barracks?” No, (laughs) anyway that didn’t really phase me back then because I’m still believing everything.
Then I also got married—there’s the first ex [wife] (showing a picture). I should have known— It was December 29, 1972, it snowed eighteen inches. We had an accident on the way to the temple. Her bridesmaid left a dress in the LA airport, another one got snowed in, and the cake got snowed-in, in Hunter. I should have, from a karmic point of view said, Hum, okay I know what I am getting into. Instead I said, “I’m tough. I can handle anything,” so I continued. I brought the wife to Camp LeJeune and we had our first kid there.
Now, digressing for just a minute in 1998, I get a call from the National Institute of VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 9 | P a g e
Health. And they say, Did you know at Camp LeJeune during the years ’67 to ’85 the water was contaminated with trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, and benzene. We bathed in it. We drank it. My first kid was born there my second kid was conceived there. Who would later have a ventricular septal defect a heart defect, which we had him operated on and he’s okay. He’s my pharmacist right now interestingly enough.
I decided—I said, “This Marine Corps sucks,” which I actually knew when I first got there. Vietnam had been winding down and I began to see the guys. One of the guys, my sergeant, on the Onslow Beach detachment him and a corporal were Vietnam vets. I didn’t understand it at the time, but they had been sent by their unit TDYxii to get rid of them. Because they were crazy and I found out why. They took me, and they did this with every new guy what they call FNG. A new guy they would put them in the back of a jeep. Now you’ve got the front two seats and the back seat. Now, the back seat wasn’t tied to anything and when they would hit a dune, it would fly up but that’s where I’m sitting. They took me on a helluva ride, because they wanted to get some excitement, some adrenaline going. They wanted to get my reaction. I didn’t understand that, but I do now.
Anyway, all of those kinds of things still kind of believing the media sold us down the river. And, those Communist Pinkos, those Jane Fonda’s, those you know – Still having kind of a narrow attitude. And then I’m inspired now. I sure as heck want to get out of this darned Marine Corps. I had actually typed up my release paperwork forty-five days early, with my acceptance to BYU [and] took it to the battalion commander. And, he knowing that my wife was pregnant, says, Sergeant Davis you can re-up or extend and then you don’t have to worry about the kid.” Of course, I was thinking not only no, but hell no. But I got out early, [and went] two years at BYU. Then my second kid, the pharmacist, is born with a ventricular septal defect and he had surgery, so that was kind of a—I was into journalism that was my major at BYU journalism and public relations.
WC: But back when you were in the military at some point, you went from having feelings of patriotism and trust and belief in the war. You were stopping Communism and then something happened while you were on active duty maybe at Camp LeJeune where you began to feel differently about the war? Or you began to trust less in the government?
AD: Well, I didn’t trust the system, because I had been jacked around a little bit. I would come pretty close to an Article-15. I’d made sergeant because of the high school ROTC, but I was disenchanted, disillusioned with the military. I don’t think I questioned the Vietnam thing until much later. But some of those experiences now with some of the guys made sense. I just kept truck’n because I’m a survival guy. I’m conditioned to survive, I’m tough.
I had two years of off-duty education at Camp LeJeune [and] went to East Carolina University. So, I’ll always be a Pirate. And those of you who know anything about East Carolina, they are actually playing in a bowl game again. Two years there, then two years at BYU, graduated and wrote for the Daily Universe, and as I was telling Lee. I started thinking outside the box at BYU, because all of a sudden I’m reading all this stuff about VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 10 |
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Watergate. All the President’s Men comes out and I got to go see it. And, all of a sudden everybody wants to be a journalist and they want to report and write the truth. I like to present both sides and let the reader decide what the truth is because usually it’s somewhere in the middle. I was beginning to say, “Hm.” At BYU, I was a critical thinker and some things being told about or being written, especially about Watergate the system, the military system, the government. And guess what? I covered when I was the beat reporter at the Daily Universe the federal agencies. Anyway, I didn’t write any fantastic stories. But I got the award at the end of the year because the VDT’s
xiii were just coming online. Where you could actually type a story in a video display tube and then you could actually hit a button and it [went] to the editor. Somehow I got the award at the end of the year for the mysteriously disappearing story. When I hit the button, the editor never got it. I didn’t write many stories, so they didn’t print many.
I went to the Marine Military Academy as a public affairs practitioner and part-time journalist. Tom Segal who had been a Marine journalist was the public affairs director so I worked for the Marine Military Academy writing news releases and taking pictures and also worked for him part-time as a newspaper writer-photographer, so I got to meet some interesting people.
WC: So this is after the military? After you got out of college?
AD: Right, I graduated from college so about two years of— This was in Texas a small town in south Texas.
WC: How was your feeling about the war or the war’s purpose? How had that been changing in this period of active-duty, separated, going to college.
[1:00:00]
AD: I started reading, All the President’s Men and again, started to question the whole efficacy. The whole value of this—Wait a minute. I’ll go back. In the summer of ‘66 my uncle who had been in the Air Force for seventeen years, came to California while I was in Livermore High School, to visit and he spent the weekend with us. We took him to Travis Air Force Base to fly out to Vietnam. Then in December that year, they had found him floating in the Saigon River. I guess, maybe I began to question then, but I repressed it or whatever. My uncle is found floating down the Saigon River. Something is fishy and this is not right. I have done research since then and after having dealt with his family. Apparently he was a raving alcoholic, which is kind of in my family history too. My other uncle was a Navy chief and he was a closet alcoholic. I began to question a little bit. I couldn’t really put words or emotions, but it was a question that said, something is not right here.
WC: How old were you when that happened?
AD: Um, seventeen probably—Right before I went to the Marine Military Academy.VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 11 |
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WC: So, generally, you’re feeling was that the war was legitimate and what the president is saying is honest.
AD: Yeah.
WC: But you were beginning to have some questions because of a family tragedy?
AD: I digressed a little bit because I kind of repressed that. Well I also repressed my mother dying when I was twelve. I should have brought that up too. I guess that was a trauma. So, that’s kind of affected my relationships.
A: Bill, can I ask a question? So, just from what I’m gathering you started with the Hindenburg and you talked about the tragedy of your mom and the tragedy with your uncle. Is that pretty much the brick that pulled out, that broke down that wall of patriotism too, is it tragedies?
AD: Not yet, because I’m immune to them, okay I just keep truck’n.
A: What about during the war? I’m assuming you probably experienced—
AD: Well again, I saw the guys come back from Vietnam and how screwed up they were. I saw how high the AWOLxiv rates were, but I didn’t put it together into my own personal epiphany. It was kind of, I’ve got to separate it my survival is prime. I wasn’t into that unity consciousness thing yet, that would come years later.
The beginnings of it— My life is born in trauma, experiencing trauma but also repressing rejection. Then also moving— I got to get out of here. You’ve got to have some way out of this you’ve got to retreat and get the heck out of here. So, I was thinking some things that one of my buddies at the Marine Corp Academy, his brother went to Vietnam and got killed. But that was second-hand that wasn’t my experience. So, losing my uncle, oh here it comes again.
My buddy, Leonard Erickson from Livermore, graduates in ’67. And, he was the older guy so he had the car. So all of younger guys we—He has the nice car. Anyway, after I went to the Marine Military Academy. I get a notice that he was killed in Vietnam in the A Shau Valley. I was just continuing [my] education [and working in the] harvest crew. I just thought damn. I didn’t have time to stop [and] process, or think about any of this stuff. I’m tough. I can take anything. So, probably, you’re right. Probably it affected me more than I’d allow or would tell anybody about, but that’s not the way we do it in our house. (laughs) That was our mentality. So, I digressed a little bit. Yes, you’re right, Bill. Some of those things affected me, but I really didn’t process it, I just kept going.
WC: After you left the military and went to college, did you think about it more then? Did you join any veteran’s organizations? Did you know Vietnam veterans at BYU?
AD: No, not at BYU those kinds of things were few and far between. I spent my time trying to VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 12 |
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help get Orrin Hatch elected. I’ve regretted that since, but anyway we’ll get to the epiphany parts later. We had some veterans that got together. We found out that we were all veterans. So, we’d all get in back of the classroom and kind of raise hell and compare notes while the teacher was doing his lecture. I remember one time the instructor was going to throw us out and said, “You guys shut the heck up back there.” But we didn’t (laughs) we didn’t want to be told that. Anyway, I didn’t join any groups. [I] just kind of kept truck’n along.
I got the job at the Academy, but they cut my job. Again, I wanted to be a warrant officer pilot. So, I investigated the Army again. I took the flight aptitude test, which I passed. Then I get in front of the board, the board says, “You actually have good test scores” which surprised the hell out of me, because I don’t do too well on tests. So, I made the 120 or whatever the GCT was and they said, Have you ever thought about being an officer? You could really do well. Okay so anyway, I went to Army OCSxv in 1980 at Fort Benning. [I was] the only one in my family ever to be an officer. I guess I was blazing the trail or whatever. I was a MPxvibranch officer. I did the jump training and all that stuff. Then I was a company— Three of my kids were born military brats. I was a company commander in Germany, and this was in January 1986. The battalion commander comes in the lieutenant colonel; he lays the relief letter on my desk. I read it for about three minutes, and then I start cussing him out. I do remember one thing I said, “It doesn’t matter what SOB you put in this freakn’ chair the same thing is going to happen to him.” Now there was an epiphany for me. I was so pissed and so angry at a freakn’ system. It came out then. Nine months later, he did relieve my successor. I gave him a psychic read but I didn’t know about that stuff then. I wasn’t into that. (laughs)
WC: So, you’d already been in the Marine Corps, you’d graduated from college, and then you went to OCS and joined the Army and rose up thru the ranks to become a company commander in Germany in the eighties?
AD: That’s right, that’s when I got my release but I had a job in public affairs. Because I thought, there’s my out. I can go into journalism, which I did. Me and Willie Haye we ran an award winning paper for a year. (laughs) Then the department of the Army said, “We have to release you from active duty because you have failed to maintain the standards required in the officer course.” So, it was a riff basically, but because I got such a bad OERxviiixvii I took it to the JAG. The JAG looked at it and he started laughing and said, “This is a joke, right?” And I said, “No, it’s not a joke. That’s what my battalion commander said about me.” And he said, “Man, that’s the lowest OER I’ve ever seen.”
[1:10:10]
(laughs) I can laugh about it now but—(laughs)
WC: What rank were you and where were you stationed?
AD: Well mostly, I was stationed in Fort McClellen off and on doing the MP school and Fort Bliss, Texas and then Mannheim and Kaiserslautern, Germany.VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 13 |
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WC: And you were a captain, major?
AD: Right, captain. Then I got out and went to Phoenix in ’88 and worked as a security officer on a nuclear power plant and continued with my Army reserve. I was the XO for a confinement facility unit that they deactivated. My commander got relieved, [and] it brought all of that stuff back. And I said, “How dare they treat people like that.” My systemic or my bureaucratic feelings were coming out not necessarily attached to war. But, I’d seen the system screw so many people by then that I was teetering. They deactivated that unit in Phoenix and I had to go to San Jose, California. I was on a MP brigade and eventually, I made major in the reserves.
Then, I got divorced. (laughs) That was the first ex [wife] you know, with five kids and a divorce. That’s a hell of a lot of child support. My youngest was five, so I’m looking at thirteen years of child support. (laughs) So, anyway I lost another job and then I went to Phoenix and was an assistant manager of a Circle K. Then I was in the hospital, I had kidney stones. Here’s an epiphany. And, the voice says, “Move to Salt Lake City.” I said, “Dang, I only know two people up there. I don’t hunt. I don’t fish. I don’t ski and I hate snow.” I’m kind of convinced that it’s a karma thing. (laughs) My second ex [wife] would say, “No, you came here to marry me.” No, I don’t think so. (laughs) I get along with the second ex [wife] too.
So, another marriage and I did get into some therapy after the first divorce and began processes, anger management, and various things. I worked in a federal halfway house. After, I got into some twelve-step programs, addiction recovery, [and] those kinds of things. Then I felt like I was able to help those kids in the halfway houses because 80 percent were there for drug issue. Then I got a job with UTAxix in ’95 and [have] been driving for fifteen years.
When I got divorced the first time, I was into spirituality, Eastern religions, near-death experiences, and Shamanism. So, those were my interests. So, I began reading about them, indigenous healing spirituality. And, I’ve got some friends that have had near-death experiences and they kind of helped me to understand some things. The final epiphany came—Although in ’91 I still supported the United States. Our unit wasn’t activated because we weren’t able to be trained well enough to deploy. I had a little bit of mixed feelings, like what the heck. We’re bombing Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War in ’91. Something doesn’t sound right, but I’m still there. I began to do a lot of reading on family origin issues, on various abuses, relationship[s], addiction[s] [and] more therapy. I began to understand my family issues and kind of where it had led me to at that point.
In 2003, we invaded Iraq and I said, “Wait a minute, something isn’t right. This’s not right at all.” The slow epiphany was beginning and I had read a lot of history books. I knew there were a lot of things that didn’t add up. At that point, I started— And, over the years I probably got the best Vietnam era group of history books. Many of them are out of print or old or are rare and then I read them all. The Betrayal by William Corson, About Face, Dave Hackworth, A Bright Shining Lie, Neil Sheeham , Secrets of the VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 14 |
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Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg, who by the way was a Marine company commander then worked for RAND
xx and the Defense Department. I began to say, “Wait just a freak’n minute here, something is not right.” I began to dig deeper and deeper and then I got a book about the media coverage in Vietnam. And, then I began to compare and contrast, as you have your history students do. My feelings were right. Then I didn’t have the evidence, now I had the evidence. I knew that invading Iraq was not right. So, here I have my two boys in the 1404-Transportation Company in Show Low, Arizona and that unit had been activated during the Gulf War. I remember that some kids were going to go on their missions and they didn’t go. I kind of kept that in the back of my mind.
In December of 2002, (shows picture) this son next to [the] youngest is called to a mission and is supposed to go to Vladivostok, Russia. I had him over night and I said, “Son, if your unit is activated, you know where you are going?” He said, “Yes dad, I do but mom doesn’t.” And I said, “I understand.” He was pulled off his mission and of course the first ex [wife] calls me up and I held the phone out here, “Yeah, yeah. I understand.” Why don’t you call Church military relations and see what you can find out. It wasn’t my job to try to solve her problems anymore. So, she did and they guy who actually runs it Frank, I can’t remember his name is a retired Air Force colonel. He was actually our stake president in Germany. And he said, “Yes, Sister Davis don’t feel bad, we brought a kid back from Peru, all the way in country to be activated.” That was kind of the under link. At that point, it wasn’t from a religious reason that I opposed it but it was from the whole idea that we can take people to war. And, the more I read and I started writing letters to the editor in 2003, connected with and joined with Veteran’s for Peace and VVAW. Then I started organizing many different events in Salt Lake City, [Utah] in 2004 until 2008 or ’09.
WC: So, were you reading these books on Vietnam to try to understand what was going on in Vietnam to try to gain
[1:20:00]
some clarity about how you were thinking in a fuzzy way about Vietnam during that period? Or was it more about trying to see what similarities there might be between Vietnam and what Sadaam was doing in Kuwait?
AD: Well, both. Both, because I see as I’m beginning to see our foreign policy as I read history has pretty much been the same since Woodrow Wilson, [that’s] my conclusion. So, then I began to read in some of these other books. I have a whole ton of them. If Eisenhower had allowed Ho Chi Minh to have open elections at the Geneva Accords in ’54, there would have been no Vietnam. Now, how many people know that? But we decided to bring a guy out of France, Bao Dai and put him in as our puppet. Then we went through many, many other puppets from Diemxxiiixxi to Longxxii to Huu all the way through. So, as I began looking at it from a historical point of view, but also a journalistic critical thinking point of view. Then I met Ellsberg and heard Howard Zinn talk in 2004. And, I said, “Holy moley, we’ve been (laughs) deceived all this time and where was I?” I VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 15 |
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was a history guy, but I never connected the dots until that time.
WC: How did that make you feel? How’s your trust and faith in the government shifted? And let’s throw patriotism in there too. Has it shifted a lot with all these revelations?
AD: Yes, with my epiphanies, my reading, and my critical thinking. I really kind of came to that maybe a couple of years three-four years before then. I no longer believe in the US Government [and] what they tell us. I no longer believe that we are who we say we are. From my previous experience, I just couldn’t put everything together. I read a couple of years ago, probably the best book on Vietnam. It’s a history of Vietnam by John Prados. It’s a big thick book and he puts it into a very easy to understand context. There’s another one called Dereliction of Duty that follows all of the administration’s missteps from Eisenhower, to Kennedy to Johnson. This guy just made colonel; no I think he actually made brigadier general. He’s a general on active duty. He wrote the book on the missteps, and now he’s part of the misstep that’s happening again, the repeating cycle.
So, I feel cathartic. I’m still pissed. (laughs) So, I take my medication. It’s good to be able to. I got pissed when I did this stuff too, so it wasn’t necessarily therapeutic.
One of the guys here, (showing picture) Gene Barrett, used to get on my bus. He had this Vietnam vet hat on, and he wouldn’t talk to me. I gave the card to his wife and I said, “Have Gene call me.” About six months later at least he starts talking to me. Now come to find out, Gene did very well in Vietnam, worked with the Phoenix Programxxivand special [operations], etc. [He] came back to Fort Hood and he turned to alcoholism and the same kinds of things and they gave him a chapter-14 for misconduct. I said, “Well damn,” here he is working for the state couldn’t hear, needed a new hearing aid, had a cataract on his eye. So, he couldn’t get a license. His employment opportunities were all screwed up. He was my first client that I helped with my veteran’s thing. I said, “Gene, give me the number of your case manager in Vocational Rehab.” So, I called her up and said, “Tell me what Gene needs to get so we can get these two things done for him.” She said, “I need a letter from the VA saying that they won’t do this.” I said, “Well, I have a letter sitting right here, I’m going to send him over with it. You make a copy and give him back the original.” Now it took us two years fighting the votech bureaucracy to get his hearing aid and to get his cataract [taken care of] but now he has a job. That again was another epiphany I said, “You know, we’re not going to stop this crap.” Because number one, after reading Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket” and a bunch of others. I already knew the military industrial complex is going to continue, at whatever it does, no matter what we say.
I have to channel my anger into something. Now this is what I created, although me and the IRS have long since parted ways. When I filled out a twenty-six page IRS form 1023 that says, You are either a public charity or a private foundation. I said, “No I’m not either freak’n one of these. I’m helping Veterans.” I threw three-hundred bucks down the toilet to send a form into the IRS. So, I had a good idea and this is kind of what— I’m still helping veterans with issues, compensation in terms of education outreach, and advocacy. I’ve decided that I’ve helped maybe twenty-five thirty vets, a lot of them Vietnam vets. To either get increases from seventy to one-hundred, eighty to one-VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 16 |
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hundred, or to start all over again. I stopped counting just for my own satisfaction quotient. I’ve helped get over $100,000 for these guys. Now, that’s where I get satisfaction, because I’m fighting the system. Vets have said to me, “Why do I go to war and have to come home and fight for my benefits?” I said, “Because that’s the system. I help them circumvent the system; tweak the system with information [and] handouts. [I give] personal or email advice and I also do the GI rights hotline. I get calls from active duty kids who are having issues. Of course, after having been an NCO and an officer I can sort of direct them through the maze of their situation and give them information that will help them begin to solve the problem.
WC: So, would it be fair to say that what you learned from your experiences was that we can’t stop wars, we can’t stop machinery. So, the best we can do is to help our brothers and sisters when they come home.
AD: Right, a young kid named Jeremy called me because— Here is when it all kind of comes full circle. I don’t know if any of you saw a PBSxxvdocumentary about a company that was in Iraq, came back to Fort Carson, and had all kinds of things happen. Actually, four guys went out one night and one of the three shot and killed one of the others. That was Jeremy’s platoon. Many of those were given Chapter 5-7 convenience of the government. Character disorder, personality disorder the same thing that Brian David Mitchell has. He’s not schizophrenic. He’s narcissist and he has a real personality disorder. But the military doesn’t want to pay from the Defense Budget for the 30 percent that Jeremy was going to get. He doesn’t get his 30 percent from DODxxvi they kick him out on “Other than Honorable.” Then I get him and I say, “We’ve got to go to the Discharge Review Board to upgrade your discharge,” which is just as bureaucratic and complicated as filing for compensation. You have to be a lawyer. [Of] course, I’ve ordered the CD-ROM with all of the regulations, guidelines, checklists, and advocacy information from the military Law Task Force people that I’ve been working with. That’s what it all comes down to, knowledge is power.
WC: That’s what you send out on nearly a weekly basis, right?
[1:29:56]
AD: That’s part of it—
WC: You send sections of it out too—
AD: I actually get this from a retired lieutenant in the Philippines. I send that out because a lot of times it will have good information on filing for compensation or if they are retired on Tri-care. It covers a wide spectrum of issues for veterans or retirees and I have both retirees and veterans on my list that I send out. That again is my premise. Education is paramount, knowing the system or know your enemy know what you are up against. So, that’s kind of what I do. I’ve kind of channeled my energy to helping the younger vets and older vets when they call.VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 17 |
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WC: Have you ever been to Vietnam or have any interest in going?
AD: No, I get all kinds ads from the various magazines I work with the vet centers. They get all the VSO magazines and I’ve looked through those. There are a lot of tours that go back. I’ve suggested that to Rick and some of the other guys. It might be a good healing thing for them to do because the healing process after having dealt with the PTSD, the traumatic brain injuries, and the new stuff that kids have. There’s one Navy guy, a fellow worker Cliff and I’ve been trying maybe five to seven years. I said, “Cliff when are you going to file for your Agent Orange?” Finally, he did it and [it] went from 20 percent to 80 percent and he got money for his kid’s college. So, that’s kind of the satisfaction I get, but on the other hand too in connecting with veterans. These guys have actually written things about some of their experiences. I thought I would just read snippets of some of their epiphany moments and some of their feelings. You know all of these guys Bill. This is from Larry we call him, Big Lar he works at the VA by the way. (laughs)
WC: This is Larry Chadwick?
AD: Larry Chadwick he was in First [Cavalry] he went to the VA to get help. They told him to get in line, quit whining, and you’re not a real veteran anyway. He’s looking for work to feed his small kids and he can’t find a job because he has a$100 a day heroin habit. Then he goes to an anti-war rally because he knows every other person there on some level. [He] knows he can relate to them because war is wrong so, in essence that saved Larry’s life. Interestingly enough, Larry and I are both from California. Well, Larry is kind of from Utah.
The guy, his name is Jack, good ole Jack. Anyway, he started a program called, Swords to Plowshares, which is still in operation in San Francisco. Jack I can’t remember his last name. They used this as the pilot project for what is now called the Vet Centers. They’re not on the VA campus they’re out in the communities. They’re less threatening. So, that people can just walk in and get therapy, get job information, and all of those kinds of things. Jack and Big Lar were good friends. They were both kind of crawling around the tenderloins in San Francisco with heroin problems. Now this is Rick— I actually have the entire book that he wrote, and Rick you’ve heard him speak probably sometimes.
WC: Rick came to this campus about a dozen years ago for the first time. He was introduced to me by Dr. Jackie Patravich who is a psychiatrist at the VA. My wife and I knew her and her husband from Colorado and they happened to come to Salt Lake. We happened to come to Utah Country and we hooked up on a hike one day up in the mountains. I said, “Jackie I’m really interested in having a vet come and talk to my Vietnam class. Would you be interested in putting a note up on your board for people who come thru for counseling for PTSD?” And say, Hey, this guy down in UVSCxxvii is looking for someone to come down. Rick and I connected and had lunch. He said, “Okay, I will come down” and he stood in a packed room, in Center Stage. We had to get a bigger room and he talked for an hour and a half. First, a psychologist who runs that program was there—VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 18 |
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AD: Dr. Allen?
WC: I don’t remember his name. Then Jackie was there as a psychiatrist who specializes in PTSD and they talked a little bit about the clinical issues. Then Rick got up and talked for over an hour plus and no one drew a breath the entire time. He pulled the wallet out—
AD: To show the picture—
WC: and the picture of the man that he had killed a member of the Viet Cong. And, he has had the picture made a bit bigger. He held it up like this and said, “This is the man I shot thru the chest.” After he got out of the military, he’s not from Utah but I think he came to Salt Lake—
AD: He’s from California—
WC: to go to the violin making school that’s downtown, I think. But he was so affected by the war that he couldn’t finish. He’s been in treatment several times a week since then.
I asked him the same question, “Have you ever thought about going back? And what you could do is see if you could find the family whose husband or father owned that wallet.” And it’s happened there have been TV shows that have been made. People go back and say, I think this belongs to you and it makes for some very interesting relationships. Rick said, “I’ve thought about that. I’m not ready to do it.”
AD: No, he’s not (laughs)—
WC: But this was ten or more years ago. I see him periodically and I hope to ask him again. Have you thought about going back?
AD: Yeah, I called Rick [last name] and said, “Hey I’m going down to do Bill’s thing. [Do] you want to come along and shoot the bull and whatever?” He says, “No it’s a little too long for me.” This is Rick and he says, (reading from what Rick wrote) “We were never allowed to talk about our experiences, nobody wanted to know. I want to expose to others, the horrific mental and physical stress that war is to the people who actually fight it. I’m tired of holding them inside. Flashbacks occur, frequently at times they are queued by external senses, such as smells or sights other times by actions or people or situations. Still other times, Vietnam is just there, all of a sudden. I don’t know why it can fully occupy my mind constantly for days and nights. Vietnam is in my head forever.
Now this is Gene [Barrett]. Gene finally—The one that I helped, finally wrote down some things. (Reading) “Vietnam was a war of ambush and surprise. A relentless war with no front, no place to retreat to, and no place for rest. We became addicted to high-tension, living etched forever in our minds of the daily traumas and hellish experiences. I can still hear the sounds that haunted me, smell the smells that lingered in the jungle coupled with the fear and pressure of combat. We spent sixty days at one time in the jungle with just enough water to drink. Necessity hardened us. We learned how to VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 19 |
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survive on nerves alone. I thought to myself what have we become, but it wasn’t life threatening and went on eating. Not only have we become hardened but we learned a sensitivity that only men in combat can teach.”
This one is Nikko. The chapter is named the “Nikko Shock Chapter.” Nikko survived Hamburger Hillxxviii he was a medic. I’m going to read you a couple of things and then I will tell you the rest of the story. He was a conscientious objector, protested the war with the takeover of Columbia prior to his going in.
[01:40:11]
(Reading, “Nikko Shock Chapter”) “I conscientiously and deliberately took one man’s life something artificially to both my morality and my mission. I had gone to Vietnam for the express purpose of saving lives. How could I ever again claim to be a peaceful and non-violent person?” Basically, what he had to do is, a couple of troops were being pinned down by a sniper he had to low crawl up to the three guys, take out a 45 and kill the sniper, so then he could assist the three guys. That’s what he’s talking about here. (Reading, “Nikko Shock Chapter”) “My experiences in fourteen months of battle not only convinced me of the absolute futility of war, but they destroyed my soul. My own morals were severely corrupted. Everything I believed in was cast aside in the name of self-preservation. Once, I actually strangled a fellow soldier in order to save him from spending the rest of his life as a vegetable. He had received a massive head wound. (Pause) I think of the ones who lost their lives in battle were the lucky ones. We the living felt the immense loss of our innocence and the destruction of our morality. No one wins in a war like that. (Pause) I helped bury my feelings in booze and drugs. I became a daily drinker. As long as I was under the influence, it would dissipate the anger and the angst for a while. In ’97, PTSD struck with full force, flashbacks on a daily basis, I would go two or three days without sleep. And when I finally did sleep, I could only sleep for a few hours and then I would—”
I got to know Nikko he moved here in 2003, and immediately we connected. I would call him at least once a week just to see how he was doing. A lot of times I would go to his house and he was tying one on or he was trying to sleep. One time he was into the anti-war thing and I would always pick him up and take him to the protests. One time he had a grand mal seizure and completely fainted. And, they had to take him to the hospital. We finished the rally then we went to his house to see if he was okay. We drove up in front of his house and I see Nikko walking down Fifth East totally away from his home. They had, the VA had put him on a bus to go home. He still hadn’t recovered from his grand mal seizure [and] he’s walking down Fifth East. So, we run up from his house, which is on Hollywood, this way. We run up and say, “Nikko come here let’s take you home.” “I’m looking for my house.” I say, “Come on” so we took him to the house. It took another hour of us talking to him to bring him back. What had happened was the alcoholism had caused the grand mal seizures and he would totally black out. I spent a lot of time with Nikko. Actually, one time they did an intervention from the VA and the hospice. They wanted to take his keys. I was very emotional when I said, “This man has been through so much hell the only way that he can deal with his anger and stop from VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 20 |
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hurting himself or other people is to drink the alcohol and stay here. Now, that’s a helluva problem, but, that’s where we are at.” And, as I described to the people in the intervention, Nikko was bawling like a baby. After everybody left, I said, “It’s okay man. How come you got upset?” He said,”Because you were telling them exactly what I wanted to tell them, but I couldn’t.” We became tight close friends. A lot of my favorite pictures are with Nikko (showing pictures). That was in a class at Salt Lake Community College, leading the marches here. Participating with Scott and I think we have him here in one of Kathy’s classes, we’re doing the limbo. Showing kids what the times were like. I teach outside the box in order to understand Vietnam you have to understand Frisbees, the limbo, and Woodstock. I helped kids understand historically what was going through our minds when I gave the presentations.
I left for vacation in 2006 [Nikko] called me and he said, “I need some food.” So, I took him some food. I kind of felt like that would be the last time I would see him. I had to go with the wife to see a daughter-in-law. I gave him a hug and told him I loved him. And, about ten days later, I got a call from his lady friend, saying they just found Nikko. He had a grand mal and basically blacked out. His head had hit the table and then he hit the floor. There was so much trauma that he expired from that and he was in there for ten days. I had some of the other guys, Dr. Bob and Gene, I said, “Check on Nikko, because I’m going to be gone.” We don’t like our brothers to die alone and that’s kind of one of my regrets that I wasn’t able to be there. His ex-wife came from California and we had a nice memorial service and get-together.
To me it’s about the brotherhood. The guys who survived aren’t the heroes; they’re blaming themselves every day for surviving. The lucky ones are the ones that they left behind. [They’re] dealing with the PTSD, the TBI, xxixthe guilt, anger, and shame. It’s my privilege, to hopefully have made a small difference in their lives.
I call Rick up his birthday is on December seventh, that’s an easy one to remember. I said, “Rick happy birthday. Do you want to go with me?” He said, “Na.” Sometimes you have to understand [that] as much as they like you they can’t connect with you, because it’s too scary number one and then their fear of loss. The one guy that they got close to in Vietnam, Rick and he swore he would never get close to anybody again. It’s almost like he’s daring me, I dare you to get close to me. (laughs) I understand the dynamics of that and I know that’s just the way it is. I have another friend who did three tours in Vietnam and he and I have gotten tight the last year or so. I told him, “I really look up to you because you spent three tours and you came and took your medals and tossed them over the fence.” He’s really one of the neatest guys. I’m connecting with these guys on a personal level not just to help veterans, but on a personal level. So, if I can help their quality of life, that’s good, but just the friendship.
Bill Gasner, another Vietnam vet friend of mine who drives a bus. I guess I’m kind of surrounded by veterans whether it’s at work or wherever I’m and maybe that’s my life’s work is to do what I can.
[1:49:39]VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 21 |
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WC: I want to ask you one more question in this setting where you are talking to students who are in school now, and students who will be at this university in years to come. If there is any message, that you would like to leave for students now and five ten twenty years from now, what would that be?
AD: Well, summing it up, I would say, war is probably the ultimate violation of moral values, the ultimate failure of conflict resolution. But, because it’s big business it sells. There are defense contractors and sub-contractors in every district in every state. It means jobs and it’s so interconnected with jobs. Good paying jobs, jobs with access, jobs with lobbyists, jobs who have access to congressmen and senators. We’re not going to stop that. What I talk about to kids on the bus I say, “We have to start the revolution.” One or 2 percent of the billionaires on the top, I think there are 1100 of them now. We have to take care of ourselves. We have to connect with each other. If there’s something we can do to help each other, we have to do it. Not because we can pay them or they can pay us, but because we volunteer. Because we’re changing the consciousness of the planet the revolution has started. But it’s not about governments because, I personally no longer believe in any government. Especially this one it’s just as corrupt and just as blighted and convoluted as the governments we’re trying to tell— We’re trying to tell Iraq how to have a government. (laughs) We’re trying to tell Afghanistan how to have a government. We’re not a good example of that at all.
The solution, as I was talking about before the interview. The financial I’m reading a lot of books now on the financial issues what caused the real estate, the dot com bubbles and all of these. The financial things in this country are so complicated that the average person doesn’t know. But finances affect everybody whether they are buying a house, or a car, credit ratings. We have the environmental issues. We have the financial issues [and] we have the war issues. All of those are interconnected, if you tweak one thing you cause three more problems. It’s not that simple. It’s much more complicated. We need critical thinkers to be able to think outside the box because the problems we have are so complicated in the box. You’re not even going to become close to solving them unless you think way outside the box. That to me, means bringing in the spiritual forces that are in the fourth and fifth dimension. Now some people think that’s a little weird.
I can actually tell when people get on the bus, I’ve had fifteen years to practice it. I can pick up things about certain people, I can hone in. I kind of know the kind of person you are or what I can say to inspire you, or to help you along your path. Some people would call that just good coaching or career advice. I say, I gave you a physic reading, but that’s not what it is. So, let us connect with each other. Let us connect with spiritual forces that are going to help us to make a transition to a whole new consciousness, a whole new paradigm. That’s really, what all of this is all about it’s about understanding history. Not necessarily because we’re going to repeat it, I mean we have seen it so many times. But history is about people, it’s about working together, it’s about changing each other’s lives and participating in each other’s lives. I guess to make a long story short, is all this other stuff is not going to change.VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 22 |
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Just in closing, this is the last Army Times and it concerns a college kid. Here’s a college kid he’s in—What college is he in, Virginia Tech obviously. (reading article) “Iraq War vet whose college essay about his addiction to killing in war got him suspended and sent to undergo a psychiatric exam.” Now basically, all he said was, “It feels good to kill in so many words.” He told the truth, it does. There’s nothing like it, because you are the one still standing the other person is gone, he’s down. That’s addicting, my own two sons are addicted, they’re cops in civilian life. So, now they have the Iraq addiction and now they are cops. It’s psychological, it’s physical, [and] it’s spiritual. But if you tell the truth, like this kid did (laughs) then you are suspended from college. There’s the paradox. You have to speak your truth, but you have to know your audience. If they’re going to be able to accept it, or to question it, or put it into some sort of a context, which many people can’t especially in Utah.
WC: Let me end by asking, Josh or Lee if they have a question.
A: Yeah, I have one question; I noticed this sticker right here on your briefcase, which says, “Honor the Warrior not the War.” I see a lot of bumper stickers, which say, “Support the Troops” when you see those or read them what do you say. There’s so much behind that it’s kind of like a catch-22. What do you do when you see that, how would you respond to that?
AD: This is kind of a conundrum it’s a Zen kōan a paradox as it were in terms of understanding. Again, people because of the dumbing down of America, the educational system etcetera, which is a whole different discussion people in the United States can barely read at an eighth grade reading level. Which is what the newspapers are written therefore, when people see something that says, “Support our Troops” that means support the war and everything the government does. But for those of us, who question, we say, Wait a minute. I have a bumper sticker that says, “Support the Troops Bring them Home Now.” That’s not patriotic, that’s not nationalistic depending on what your definitions of patriotism and nationalism are. Now we know that the Germans, after the Beer Hall Putsch and Hitler ascended to power, there was nothing more nationalistic than the Nazis in Germany. Now we can compare and contrast that to George Bush’s statement where he says, “You are either with us or against us.” It sounds good on a sound bite, but it’s not realistic. Sometimes you just can’t explain that you support the troops, but you don’t support the war. It’s very difficult for people to separate that out. But you can try in your own way. You can say, “I happen to know many veterans who are against war.” Maybe that will lead to an opening where you explain that there’s a difference. There’s no way you can win a war on terrorism. I was the counter- terrorism officer at Fort Bliss you can’t win a war on terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic. I think the best definition of— From the Rand Corporation good old what’s his name? I forget his name. He said, “Terrorism is violence for effect for the larger audience.” That’s what we’re doing here. We have the media and we’re spinning something. We create history in the moment by our spin and our perceptual devices. So, in other words we’re leading people by the nose in essence. People here in Utah, for the most part are not going to understand there’s a difference between the war and supporting the troops. Sometimes, I don’t even bother to get into those discussions because it’s almost irrelevant and it’s superfluous and it doesn’t even VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 23 |
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accomplish anything unless people are more open to what that means to them.
[2:00:13]
If they have a son who has gone to war if they have a dad who has gone to war.
They don’t understand the dynamics of how that changes a family and how that can cause irreparable damage to three to four generations. My oldest son, interestingly enough hopefully, is getting out of the hospital he had a brain aneurism. Now I hope it’s not related to any of the Gulf War toxic substances. But, I asked him one time, “Son, who was your hardest coach?” I thought he would answer, “Oh, my high school football coach.” He said, “No, you were.” That was like a smack upside the head. I knew I was hard on you because I wanted you to be the best player, because I didn’t want the other kids to say, He is playing because he’s the coach’s kid. I wanted him to be good, and he was. It’s like the war it causes damage that’s irreparable. So, there’s not an easy answer to your question. But you guys in here and the young lady at least you’re more open. You’ve studied. You’ve critically analyzed history you’ve looked at various civilizations rise and fall. You’re aware of what causes those kinds of things. And, of course, Bill here is keeping you up on how you can compare and contrast the past with what is happening now and that’s where your epiphany comes. It’s like we’re doing the same thing. I don’t remember who said, The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again, and expecting different results. That’s kind of what we are doing if we look at it as life’s experience as an individual experience and as a collective experience. If we don’t do something to step out of our individual experience, so we can connect and make that connection better. But most veterans tend to isolate they tend to stay by themselves. If I don’t hear from Doctor Bob or somebody. I call them up once a month and say, “Hey, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Over.”xxx He understands what I’m saying. (laughs)
WC: So do I.
AD: In fact, it was funny he came up one weekend when the wife was out of town and we sort of had our little party. Anyway he thought that I was supposed to bring the extra stuff to drink and I said, “No I thought that you were going to bring it.” He goes and gets his little wine box and I said, “Man this is good stuff where did you get it?” The University of Utah was losing badly that weekend so it was not a celebration it was a (laughs) squelching our feelings. (laughter) But that’s kind of what I do with these guys. If I don’t hear from them then I say, “What is going on come on? Come up we will watch the ballgame.” The wife kind of let me know when I was too open about the party thing she wasn’t real happy with our party thing. I guess I’ll have to go down to Doctor Bob’s for the next party. (laughs)
WC: Lee did you have any questions?
AD: Any questions anything— It’s very complex because our personality and our interactions with people form our attitudes, opinions and beliefs. And we don’t want those changed. Because that means if I change my attitude, what does it mean about eighteen years of VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: Aaron Davis 24 |
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my life? Did that mean anything? Well it means losing my buddy Leonard Erickson in the A Shau Valley and my uncle, found dead drunk in the Saigon River that whole freak’n war was not worth those two lives. That’s what it means to me, because it’s personal and I take things personally (laughs) that’s one of my issues. (laughs)
WC: Well, thank you very much and I think with that we’ll end the interview. We’re very grateful Aaron for the information you have left for students now and in the future.
AD: It’s fun because I get to do it in different ways.
END INTERVIEW
[2: 05:04]
i Three meals
ii Vietnam Veterans Against War
iii The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
iv PTSD
v for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
vi Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
vii Brigham Young University
viii Personal Licensing Advisory Circular
ix Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
x Armed Forces Qualification Test
xi Non Commission Officer
xii Temporary Duty
xiii Video Display Tube
xiv Absent Without Leave
xv Officer Candidates School
xvi Military Police
xvii Officer Evaluation Record
xviii Judge Advocate Generals Corps
xix Utah Transit Authority
xx Research ANd Development
xxi Ngo Dintt Diem
xxii Nguyen Phan Long
xxiii Tran Van Huu
xxiv Controversial Countersurgency
xxv Public Broadcasting System
xxvi Department of Defense
xxvii Utah Valley State College
xxviii Battle of Hamburger Hill fought May 1969
xxix Traumatic Brain Injury
xxx An expression of shock